Hello, and welcome to the Vallourec Q4 and full year 2023 results call. My name is Laura, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Connor Lynagh, VP Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for Vallourec's fourth quarter and full year 2023 results presentation. I'm Connor Lynagh, Vice President of Investor Relations at Vallourec. I'm joined today by Vallourec's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Philippe Guillemot, and Vallourec's Chief Financial Officer, Sascha Bibert. Before we begin our presentation, I would like to note that this conference call will be recorded and a replay will be available following the call. You can find the audio webcast on our investor relations website. The presentation slides referred to during this call are available for download here as well. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements. Future results may differ materially from statements or projections made on today's call. The forward-looking statements and risk factors that could affect those statements are referenced at the beginning of our slide presentation. These are also included in our universal registration document filed with the French Financial Markets Regulator, the AMF. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Philippe Guillemot. Thank you, Connor. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us for this update on Vallourec's fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. Before proceeding, let me... slide two, where you can consult our safe harbor statement. Today's agenda is on slide three. I will start by giving you an overview of the highlights of the fourth quarter and full year of 2023, followed by an update on the market and commercial environment. Sascha will then take you through our fourth quarter numbers, and I will finish with the outlook for the first semester and full year 2024. First, let's look at the highlights of the fourth quarter and full year on slide five. Our fourth quarter of 2023 EBITDA was EUR 280 million, which brought our full year EBITDA to EUR 1,196 million, which exceeded the high end of our prior guidance range. Strong execution in the Americas was the primary contributor to these better than expected results. Our adjusted free cash flow for the full year was very strong, at EUR 860 million, with EUR 275 million in the fourth quarter. We have cut our net debt level in half over the last 12 months, and by over EUR 900 million versus a peak observed in third quarter of 2022. I would like to thank the entire Vallourec team for their strong performance in generating the company's best results in nearly 15 years. Looking ahead, we expect to continue to deleverage in 2024, starting in the first quarter. This will ultimately enable us to reach our target capital structure and then return capital to shareholders. Moving to our commercial and operational updates. We continue to see a robust market in our international tubes business. Demand and pricing are very strong, and our prices on new orders have continued to grow. We recently announced two noteworthy orders in the Eastern Hemisphere, which demonstrate Vallourec's unique positioning in the premium OCTG segment and its ability to deliver highly technical solutions across the world. U.S. demand is stable, and we expect market pricing to stabilize imminently. Finally, in our New Energies business, we have seen significant momentum, punctuated by the unveiling of our proprietary vertical hydrogen storage solution late last year. To slide six. As a reminder, the New Vallourec plan was announced in May 2022. We have now fully executed the plan we communicate to you at this time, giving birth to a new Vallourec. We have completed the planned shutdowns of European assets and our overhead cost reductions. This initiative will result in a EUR 230 million EBITDA improvement and an additional EUR 20 million CapEx reduction versus a planned 2021 baseline. While this marks a significant group-wide achievement, we are not finished. We continuously identify more potential, and there is more we can do to enhance margins and further narrow the prosperity gap we see versus our largest peers. Following the overhaul of our pricing policies, we will stay very disciplined and continue to follow our Value over Volume approach. Additionally, operational efficiency will stay at the top of our agenda. We have already made significant progress in moving towards an organizational setup that allow us to generate positive free cash flow through the cycle. An important contributor that remains outstanding is right-sizing our balance sheet to further reduce financial cash out. Finally, we remain well on track to reach zero net debt by year-end 2025 at the latest. Slide seven provides an update on the targets of the New Vallourec plan. As I said, we have completed all of the primary objectives we had identified in May 2022. Specifically, we have closed our German operations and executed the CapEx program to transfer those production capabilities to Brazil. We have also executed our EUR 100 million overhead cost reduction target. Our premiumization strategy in China has also been completed, and this hub will move towards group average margins over time. Finally, our local finishing capacity expansion in Saudi Arabia is completed as well. We are ramping up our higher capacity in the country now. Moving to slide eight. Here is a look at what we have done and what is to come. I will focus my comments on what is in store for 2024 and beyond. In our go-to-market strategy, we plan to develop a premier new energy franchise and grow other high-margin revenue through services and accessories. Operationally, we are committed to driving higher profitability in Brazil via improvement in our operational processes and performance. We also see substantial opportunity to improve the way in which we harness data to improve our operational efficiency and profitability. In terms of financial management, we remain highly focused on cost and cash discipline. We plan to optimize our balance sheet to account for the significant deleveraging we have executed thus far. Once we have reached our target capital structure, we intend to return 80%-100% of our total cash generation to shareholders, potentially as early as 2025. We will update you on all of these initiatives over the coming months and years. Today, I would like to highlight the substantial progress we are making in developing our New Energies business. Let's move to slide nine. Overall, in 2023, we saw substantial new business wins in New Energies. Our bookings increased by over 80% year-over-year, and we added more than 10 new customers. What is very important to note is this is aligned with our Value over Volume strategy. Our New Energies business is coming with in-line or accretive margins versus our other businesses. Right now, the demand has come largely from geothermal and CCUS customers, with North America driving most of the CCUS demand, and the geothermal demand more balanced between the U.S., Europe, and Asia. We were also very proud to introduce our vertical hydrogen storage solution, Delphy, late last year. We mentioned this new proprietary offering during our Capital Market Day in September, and I'm pleased to report we executed a successful proof of concept in our research and development facility in Aulnoye-Aymeries in northern France. And customer interest in this solution, and they are currently targeting the first commercial systems deployment in 2025. We continue to expect these systems will represent a EUR 20 million-EUR 50 million revenue opportunity per unit sold, depending on the specific application. Now, let's discuss the commercial environment. On slide 11, we focus on the U.S. OCTG market. This horizontal rig count, a proxy for our demand, has been stable for months. We expect a flattish market environment from here. That said, our shipments outpaced the rig count increase in the fourth quarter and will again in the first quarter due to the destocking effect we experienced in the third quarter. On the supply side, imports remain very low. We have seen distributors rationalizing inventory. They have limited import needs at present. We expect this import will continue to remain supportive to U.S. market balance for the time being. Given the improving fundamentals regarding supply, demand, and inventories, the decline in market pricing has slowed substantially, and we expect prices to stabilize imminently. On slide 12, we focus on the international OCTG market, which drives a higher portion of our business compared to the U.S. market. Our message here is quite similar to last quarter. Drilling activity has remained stable at healthy levels for months. Capacity for premium OCTG is quite limited globally, and speaking for Vallourec in particular, we continue to experience demand in excess of our premium production capacity. Third-party data confirms this trend, with Middle East pricing moving slightly higher in recent periods. I am pleased to report that once again, in the fourth quarter, our booking trends were more favorable than this public market data. That is, the prices of our new orders have continued to show a positive trend and continue to exceed those you see in our fourth quarter results. Therefore, we foresee a positive price tailwind in our results outside of the U.S. for the next few quarters. Let me wrap up the comments on our tubes business on slide 13. We saw EBITDA improved from the third quarter of 2023 due to strong execution in both North and South America. We continue to see strong demand trends, particularly in this hemisphere. We announced two meaningful contract wins recently. First, in Iraq, we announced a contract for the supply of 15,000 tons of casing and tubing and associated accessories for the first phase of TotalEnergies' multi-energy Gas Growth Integrated Project. This is expected to be a significant multi-year project, and we look forward to collaborating on this over the coming years. In addition, we won a contract with Wintershall Dea for the Dvalin North deepwater gas development project in the Norwegian North Sea. This contract features highly premium product mix, demonstrating our continued ability to deliver high-value products globally. Looking ahead to 2024, we still have meaningful operational tailwinds. The premiumization program in China will improve margins for volumes produced in Asia as we progress through 2024. In addition, we are progressing to deliver improved efficiency and profitability in our world-class production hub in Brazil. Let's turn to our Mine & F orest segment on slide 14. Iron ore production was 1.7 million tons in the fourth quarter. The year-over-year increase reflected our return to higher production levels following the full release of the Cachoeirinha west pile in May 2023. We reiterate our 2024 expectation for the 6 million ton run rate we guided at the Capital Market Day, though, at current higher ore prices, we will be slightly above the EUR 100 million EBITDA run rate we guided at that point. We continue to advance on our phase one and phase two extension, and we'll update you on this as we progress through the year. I will now hand over the call to Sascha to comment on our financial results. Good morning, and thank you for participating in our call. We pre-released our results since we expected to exceed our EBITDA guidance range, which we have increased during the Q3 results presentation, but also since cash flow was coming in stronger than the market assumed. Therefore, I can focus on those items today that warrant additional commentary. So let's turn to slide 16. In 2023, we fully implemented the New Vallourec plan announced in May 2022. We ended the operations in Germany and generally demonstrated how Value over Volume leads to higher profitability. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2023 with the quarter a year ago provides a tough benchmark, as in Q4 2022, we have recorded the highest results for our U.S. business. You can also note that our EBITDA was burdened by about EUR 9 million due to FX in this comparison. In spite of this, we managed to report a 200 basis point improvement in the group EBITDA margin, now around 22%, and more than 23% for the full year. Most important, Q4 2023 was the fifth consecutive quarter in which we generated positive total cash generation, leading to a continuous decline in net debt. Over the last five quarters, this sums up to almost EUR 900 million in cash generation. Over to page 17. Business, we recorded lower volumes year-over-year, predominantly driven by the reduction of business in Germany, but also following our Value over Volume strategy implementation in Asia. Sequentially, however, volumes are up as the reduction in Germany was overcompensated by a pickup in shipments in the U.S. following a weak third quarter. Revenues directionally followed volumes, though we increased the ASP both year-over-year as well as sequentially. We continue to book new OCTG business at higher prices relative to the current invoicing price in the Eastern Hemisphere, which is one of the areas that give us confidence for the year 2024. Over to page 18. While absolute EBITDA is down year-over-year, the margin and the EBITDA per ton has improved both year-over-year as well as sequentially. This is a direct consequence of our pricing policies and the focus on the most attractive business opportunities. On to page 19. Q4 iron ore production was fully in line with our guidance, and together with an attractive price, led to a good EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Within the EUR 43 million EBITDA, we also have the result of our forest, specifically the non-cash IAS 41 revaluation effect. 2025 should then have lower cash out, driven largely by lower restructuring costs, allowing us to increasingly demonstrate the full cash generation capacity of Vallourec. We have not included cash effective EBITDA in this chart. However, Philippe will give you a perspective in a minute. Similarly, we have not included changes in working capital. With that, let me hand back to Philippe for the specific outlook 2024. Thank you, Sascha. Let's look at slide 25. Before I discuss the outlook for 2024, let me reflect on our excellent 2023 results. We delivered nearly EUR 1.2 billion of EBITDA, but the composition of this was also noteworthy. Tubes delivered almost 90% of this EBITDA. As compared to 2020 and 2021, where we derived the majority of our profits from our mine and forest business, we are now delivering value from our primary operations, the production of premium seamless tubes. Our cash generation was also very strong. We compare our legacy free cash flow metric here to allow you to see the substantial progress we have made in cash generation. Despite the significant restructuring cash out in 2023, we generated the best cash flow we have seen in nearly 15 years. Let's move to slide 26 to see how we plan to continue this momentum. Here is an overview of our expectations for the first half and full year 2024. Looking at tubes, we expect a slight volume decline in international tubes in the first half of the year due to the closure of our German operations. This will be offset by improved international pricing and increasing U.S. sales volumes. For the full year, we expect the strong market environment to persist, with results benefiting from strong pricing for international orders that are already in our backlog. In our mine and forest business, we expect H1 production to be approximately 3 million tons, with Q2 production to be higher than Q1 due to the rainy season impact in the first quarter. Full year production sold is expected to be 6 million tons. In both the first half and full year, costs will remain elevated. At the group level, we expect first half 2024 EBITDA to be broadly similar to the second half of 2023. We expect 2024 to represent another strong year of EBITDA generation due to robust tubes pricing, as well as our ongoing operational improvements. Finally, we plan to deliver positive total cash generation and therefore reduce our net debt in 2024, starting in the first quarter. A few words to conclude on slide 27. 2023 marked Vallourec's best year in nearly 15 years, as we fully executed the New Vallourec plan announced in May 2022, and substantially deleveraged our balance sheet. We believe the strength observed in the tubes market is durable and will contribute to another year of robust results in 2024. Finally, we are well on track to reach zero net debt by year-end 2025 at the latest, which will ultimately enable us to achieve our ambition of returning 80%-100% of our total cash generation to shareholders. Thank you for your attention. Sascha and I are now ready to take your questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll pause for just a moment while waiting for them to queue for questions. Thank you. How much did we lose in the line? We will now take our first question from Joe Churay with Bank of America. Your line is open, please go ahead. Hi, good morning, gentlemen, and congratulations on a strong set of results. I kind of have two questions, and they're to do with what you define as your optimal capital structure. In particular, how you define net debt zero. And then secondly, a question with regards to maybe bringing it back to the press release from your capital markets day, where you talk about, returning capital in the form of dividends and buybacks, assuming that Vallourec will have made substantial progress towards, your goal of reaching that zero debt. You know, in my view, you had EUR 2.3 billion of net debt, pre-restructuring. You're at about EUR 500 million now. Is that substantial? You know, if we talk about net debt in the context of 0.5 times full year EBITDA, are we, are we there yet? I'll answer first your second question. The more time goes by, the closer we are to be in a position to return, to make returns to shareholders. So yes, I think your point is right. I think you, you, you did the math yourself. We are already within the range of leverage we indicated at the capital market day. Capital structure, obviously, as we have progressed significantly in our deleveraging, we are in a good position to now look for a more optimized balance sheet, which mirror the company as it is today and its ability to raise cash. And I hand over to Sascha that will give you more color on what is our objective. Yeah. I think, first of all, we all agree we have made definitely substantial progress. And the overall leverage of Vallourec is starting to send the signals that we want to see. Nevertheless, we are not yet at net debt zero. But speaking about the optimal cap structure, I would say reaching net debt zero by simply accumulating cash while having a substantial amount of gross debts is probably not the best way to do it. So at the right point in time, we will look at our loans. We will think about the optimal volume of loans, the composition of loans, how much cash we actually need to run the business, what the total liquidity is. I think what we have today is not yet optimal, but we will take the steps to make it optimal in the future. Okay, no, that, that's very clear. Then maybe just to follow up on the dividend side, right? You have a number of covenants restricting payment of dividends, but you don't have those covenants around buybacks. Could you just provide some color on kind of more of a, you know, if, let's say, towards the end of the year, you have optimized your capital structure, just how tactical you could be with deploying some of that, you know, deploying buybacks versus dividends. So I have a slightly different reading, again, for what it's worth, but just to technically answer your question. Number one, we do have an existing authorization for buybacks. Number two, there are various ways to look at dividend constraints, but I would say the balance sheet today would already allow to pay dividends if the company and the shareholders would decide so. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, please press star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Jean-Luc Romain with CIC. Please go ahead. Good morning. Two questions, if it's possible. First, on the New Energies business, could you give a kind of indication of the tonnage which was sold in 2023? And the second question relates to your guidance. How do you define strong compared to what you published in 2023? Is it stronger, slightly lower? What? So New Energies. You remember that during our capital market day, we said that we expect that 10%-15% of our EBITDA will be coming from non-fossil application by 2030. So we are on this path. I won't give you the tonnage today. This tonnage, by the way, are geothermal application, are CCUS. And obviously, you have noticed our new development on hydrogen, which is obviously not yet generating a revenue, but hopefully will start in 2025. So we are on this, on this, on this trend, and we are well on track with our plan. As far as this year compared to last year, I gave you already a hint on what will happen in H1. As I said, that EBITDA in H1 will be broadly similar to the one we delivered in H2 last year, which was slightly, which was around EUR 500 million. Y eah, maybe we can just remind all of you that surely the biggest area of uncertainty for the second half relates to the U.S. That simply has to do with the about three months time lag between booking and invoicing. However, for the rest of the world, we can already look at our backlog. There, the time lag between booking and invoicing is about three quarters, so that gives us confidence that indeed the full year will be a strong year, but we are not yet at the point where we qualify or quantify that further. Thank you very much. Yeah. Obviously, as I said, we will further the leverage of our balance sheet, starting in June. Thank you. As a final reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Kévin Roger with Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just to understand potentially where we will end the EBITDA for the full year of 2024. You say that the pricing in the U.S. will very soon stabilize. If it's the case, would you say that the H2 EBITDA is likely to be better than the H1? Because basically you will have still the positive development from the international activities, Middle East pricing, efficiency in Brazil, et cetera. This is really the question: if the price is stabilizing in the U.S., like you said, is it fair to assume that H2 EBITDA will be better than H1? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I think we see pricing stabilizing imminently in the U.S. As we indicated, I think the prices in our backlog get higher than the pricing of our current revenue. So the trend on the initial part of the business is rather upward. Nevertheless, overall, all in all, under the assumption of a stabilization of the U.S., I think H2 could be in line with H1. Okay. So H2 in line. Understand. And, regarding the disposal process, so is there anything to mention here with the designs that you still have in Germany? So we have a few developers knocking our door, and obviously talking to us about this land. We need, as usual, when you sell such large piece of land, in a city like Düsseldorf, you need to ensure that you have the political support for the project that could be contemplated by the developer. So that's what we are working on. I remind you that we don't have to divest this land in a hurry in order to be net debt zero, by end of year-end 2025 at the latest. So it's a plus. It could accelerate our delivery. It's not a must. Okay. Okay, understood. Thanks a lot. Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Baptiste Lebacq with ODDO. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is regarding, let's say, the ramp-up in Brazil. Did you identify, thanks to this ramp-up, new additional cost savings? And the second point is more technical. Are you able to buy or are you allowed to buy some warrants which are in the end of banks, rather than making some share buyback program? Thank you. I will take the first question and hand over to Sascha for the second one. As far as Brazil is concerned, so we have fully executed what was announced in May 2022. We shut down our German operation, and we have transferred 100% of the oil and gas volume to Brazil, thanks to a CapEx plan we have fully executed in order to have the capabilities in Brazil to produce the few SKUs that were only produced in Germany. What we have until now is a typical phase where we go down the experience curve. Experience curve means that the level of quality, as an example, that was reached by Germany after 20 years of experience, is obviously not the level we enjoy today in Brazil. But it will be the case. It will be the case because obviously we are today on this experience curve that will lead slowly but surely and slowly to surely to a better cost in Brazil. So that's what we are executing right now in Brazil. Hand over to Sascha on the warrants. On the warrants. Let me respond like that j ust for everyone's understanding. So there are about 30 million warrants outstanding that have been granted back then to three banks as part of the financial restructuring. Now, we are currently observing quite a bit of short interest in our stock, and we interpret some of that to be related to hedging of those warrants. So we are observing that. We're making up our minds. We do see that it has a certain impact on the share price and in the overall notion of generating shareholder value, but also returning money to shareholders. We will see how we take that forward, but I wouldn't go further as of today. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll now take our next question from Jamie Franklin, with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Oh, hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. Most of them have actually been answered already, but just one on volumes then. So you talk about international volumes, I believe, being slightly lower in one H2 to closure of German operations. Just thinking about the split then of international tube volumes and U.S. tube volumes, is it gonna remain roughly, you know, one third U.S., two thirds international? If you could just sort of talk about the profile of volumes and the mix of those through 2024, that'd be great. Thanks. As I said, the decrease in volume is just a direct consequence of the fact that we wound down in 2023 our German operation. So when you compare year-on-year, obviously, we don't have any more the volumes in Germany. So the consequence on the international part of our business, there is a decrease. But now I hand over to Sascha to give you more color on how, by the way, our volumes are well balanced among geographies between U.S. and international. Jamie, I would say that in H1 2024, volumes outside of the U.S., i.e. volumes meaning tonnage, are higher than the ones in the U.S. So the, we have a I think we will see a shift somewhat from the U.S. in, into other markets, irrespective of the fact that the, volumes in Germany, will cease to exist. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue currently. As a final reminder, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. There are no questions coming through. I will now hand it back to Philippe Guillemot for closing remarks. Thank you. Thank you again for joining us for today's call. I leave you with the following thoughts: 2023 was a highly successful year for Vallourec and demonstrated the potential we see in our business. We are by no means finished and see continued ways to deliver increased shareholder value. We look forward to sharing our progress with you in these matters and remain firm in our aspiration to become one of the most shareholder-friendly companies within our peer group. Thank you again. Operator, you may close the call. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.