Welcome everybody to the retail shareholders of ArcelorMittal annual meeting virtually on Zoom. My name is John Andrews. It's a real pleasure to welcome Michel Wurth, who is a main board member of ArcelorMittal, a very distinguished long-term person within ArcelorMittal, and also Hetal Patel. Hetal is in charge of investor relations and will field all your questions that you may ask either before this session or during the session. Please send them anything you want to know, and then he will ask me and Michel. Michel, let me turn first of all to you. I mean, everybody knows that ArcelorMittal is the world's biggest steel company. It's done, it's a long history, and it's just had its third quarter results. Those results actually have been incredibly good.
Now, I think an outsider might say that's rather surprising given COVID-19, the effects it's had on the economies around the world. What is the picture now of ArcelorMittal? Why has the third quarter been so good?
Okay. Hello, John. Hello, all the investors who are listening to us. First of all, I would like to say that it is for me, once again, a pleasure to have a dialogue with you. You know that this is extremely important, and your voice is listened as much as the ones of any other investors. It's really a pleasure to share with you at least once a year and to tell you where we are. As John has said it, indeed, ArcelorMittal today is in a very good shape. The Q3 had been absolutely fantastic. I think that the whole year will be a very, very good years.
Everyone predicts that the year will be excellent on continuation of what has happened in the third quarter, which means the best quarter since 2008. Absolutely marvelous. Now, your question is, I think, quite obvious for people that ask, how is that possible in COVID times? I think there are really a few reasons for it, some being depending exactly on the strategy which had been followed by Arcelor, and some others coming from outside and where we have no real influence.
Let me start out with this and give maybe one explanation because what we have seen or realized after COVID was that during COVID, the whole supply chain of steel, I would say from the beginning, the steel makers up to the stockists, up to all our customers, what did they do? They tried to empty their supply chain in order to make cash and to survive. When at the beginning of this year, vaccination started to be quite effective that everyone became much more optimistic that the virus really went back. The economy jumped back very, very rapidly.
What our customers realized at that moment was that the supply chain was empty and so as a consequence was that they did not only order more because they wanted to grow and to take advantage of the bigger orders of our customers, but in the same time, they needed to refill their inventory. The world was not prepared to that. They was not prepared to that with some of our customers. Look at the automotive industry, was not prepared, for example, for transporting iron ore and coal to the plants, and hence, also increased demand of iron ore, surge of iron ore price. Remember, a good thing for ArcelorMittal because we are a big producer. Also surge in price of coal and some scarcity in supply.
The consequence of that was that, to some extent, some customers really were worried that they would not have enough steel for fulfilling all of their activities. That gives then this very huge price rise, which was, I would say, clearly higher than what was anticipated, strong demand, and so on. We were living out of that throughout the year with a peak, I would say, in July. Now, the second element is that we have a lag between the moment when we get in the order and the moment when we ship it to the customers, which means that it is precisely in Q3 and also part in Q4, that our orders have the highest value and that normally also our profitability per ton should be the biggest.
That is, I would say, the outside effect of your answer. Then comes the second element of the question. That's also what did ArcelorMittal do? Maybe that we come back to it, but only in one word, I think that all what we have done over the last years in terms of cost cutting, in terms of reviewing our strategy, in terms of optimizing our footprint, has made that, I would say, in almost all jurisdictions, Arcelor today, ArcelorMittal today is stronger and much more competitive than it had been before. Also, from that point of view, in relative terms and compared to some of our competitors in some of the jurisdictions, I don't speak about now specific names, but people in Europe know who are our big competitors.
We can see that we had relatively done better than them, and I think that's the second part of your explanation.
I'm jumping ahead slightly, but given that you've got a surge in prices, both iron ore and steel.
Mm-hmm.
Is this gonna carry on into Q1 of next year, or, I mean, what happens to your contracts?
Yes. I think these are two. Since these are two different questions, we can say that what we call the raw material basket, that is finally what you need to produce one ton of steel in the integrated blast furnace would roughly you need 1.5 tons of iron ore, and you need 500 kilos of metallurgical coal. We have seen in the first stage this year, iron ore prices surging from $80 or $70 to more than $200, coming now back to $100, but still quite a significant price. You had coal coming up later when iron ore prices were falling. That the iron ore basket in general continues to be quite high and so we are feeling a cost inflation very, very much.
It comes to that also as you have, as people, as everyone, people also in their daily life feel that natural gas has become much more important, which is also a big cost element, and fuel has been much more expensive. Look at when you buy petrol for your car, everyone feels it. In a sector high-energy-intensive industry like steel, obviously that was a question of cost inflation, which means also that when you are managing such a company, you need to make sure that if costs increase, that this has to be reflected into prices. That has come.
Now, coming to your second question of automotive, what is absolutely right, most of automotive contracts had been negotiated last year when there was not this cost push, and hence, in 2021, automotive contracts have been really much less profitable than most of the other orders we have seen because these were fixed price contracts, and we could not impose to most of our customers higher prices because of the huge price increase, cost increase we had felt. Hence, we are today negotiating most of our contracts for 2022, and what we are doing, we explain to our partners in the automotive industry what is going on, that our cost is much higher.
I would say these are obviously very professional purchasers, and they know that we cannot continue to supply at the same price. Basically, automotive prices, you'd say these are two parts of the price. The first one is the part of the metal cost, and this part will go up. The second one is what we call the extras, and that is specialties. Let's say the extra we ask for the very sophisticated steels we are selling to the automotive industry and which helps an OEM to reduce the weight of the car, to make it safer, to make it stiffer, et cetera. This part probably will not go up so much except when we introduce new grades, but the other part will definitely be there.
We hope that the good surprise in 2021, when maybe some commodity prices, the margins won't continue to be as strong as they are today, that will be partly corrected also by the automotive contracts, which in terms of volume is important. Roughly contracts represent roughly 20% worldwide for the group. If we look at U.S. or Europe, it is obviously much more, and we are more in the 30s, 30% of what's a part of these products go in our order book.
I mean, isn't the automotive sector a little bit trapped by the shortage of chips? I mean, that must be a problem from their point of view when they're negotiating with you.
That is absolutely clear. It was for us a little bit paradox in 2021, because as auto big OEMs could not produce what they had sold, they obviously bought also less steel.
Yeah.
The bad contracts in terms of results were not so high in numbers, and we could reallocate some of the steel also to other users who had heavy need to get more supply. That was obviously very useful. On the other hand, how will it continue in 2022? We believe that in the beginning of the years, there will still continue to be chip shortage, so it will slowly evolve.
We foresee also that step by step, probably the constraint will be released and automotive can start producing a little bit more, which is important because the order backlogs are extremely long and maybe for some of the people who have tried to buy a car, for some of the brands, they know that lead time is almost one year. You can imagine that there is really a strong need for higher levels of production. In the medium term, I think, or let's say in the next quarters, this is quite positive for us, and we will make all possible that when the automotive steel industry needs more steel, that we will be able to supply them.
Going back just briefly to the Q3 results, I mean, your net debt now is just $3.9 billion, which is really a transformation from a few years ago. Your stock is investment grade. Things look rather good for shareholders. Is that gonna continue, or will you start spending more money on CapEx and not giving so many goodies to the shareholders?
Right. I think that we have had the occasion to speak many times together that the group had decided some years ago definitively to strengthen its balance sheet. As you mentioned it today, with a net debt of $3.8 billion, and despite some share buybacks we have done this year, this is today the most solid balance sheet the company has ever had in its own history. Why was that? In fact, the strategy of the company was to have a maximum of net debt or a target net debt of $7 billion. Now, due to the exceptional circumstance, and also following some asset optimization or sales proceeds we have received, this level is even further down.
Now, how will it continue? I think also last year we had the occasion, I think, to already speak about that the company decided to make public a new capital allocation policy, which means, in fact, that once the target net debt has been reached, so below $7 billion, we will first pay a base dividend, whose amount needs to be discussed and on an annual basis by the board of directors. Then for the remaining, we would distribute the remaining through different ways. The preferred way, because also it is the most tax-efficient one, was share buyback programs, which had been done in the now recently, since the middle of last year.
Now, what you have seen, and even in order to show this orthodoxy, you remember our auditors probably also know that we have sold our assets in ArcelorMittal USA. The entire proceeds of that had been distributed to our shareholders in terms of share buybacks. This was absolutely good. Up to now, the group has decided to continue with this policy, and I think that we know that this is today a very useful policy because interest payments went down drastically.
We can be hopeful and sure that we are able, even in periods which would not be as bright as the period we are living today, we would continue to generate free cash flow so that we will be able to give back money to our shareholders, which is our policy. Now, this policy I explained will be regularly reviewed by the board. This, that is for sure. Definitely not for the worse, but probably easier for the better. On top of that, we will obviously also continue to invest what needs to be done in order to maintain our assets.
We will also continue to invest strategically where we have internal growth opportunities, and we have several projects which are ongoing and maybe later on we can discuss about it. We have also announced that we want to be fit in the long run by finding the right solutions for the CO2 problem. There also we have announced that in order to fulfill our goal by reducing CO2 emissions by 35%, for example, in Europe, by 2030, we need to invest.
We are presently negotiating with also the different governments so that it can be shared, that what needs to be invested will be shared between the use of some of the cash flow we generate and also some grants or some public money, because it is basically a political decision. With Europe being in front line, so that we need to have some support in order to support steel industry in Europe.
I'm glad you turned to that because I was about to ask you about COP26 and what you thought of the achievements or otherwise of the Glasgow meeting. I think in terms of meeting your target for 2030, you're talking about $10 billion of investment.
Mm-hmm.
Half of which you would like to come from governments, is that correct? What did you think of COP26, first of all? I mean, was it a step forward or not enough?
I was very much impressed that in fact the consciousness of the CO2 challenge has dramatically accelerated. I understand that some green organizations were a little bit say it's not enough, it's too slow. If we imagine and would we sit down five years back or ten years back, and we would have said ten years back where we are today in terms of consciousness or so, it is absolutely phenomenal. Why do I say it? That is because I believe, and I think ArcelorMittal believes also, that in the future, this movement towards green economies and green steel making will accelerate. That's the reason why ArcelorMittal also strategically has decided to take it as, I would say, its single most important strategic topic.
I would say also, this is also the hot topic and the first priority of our new CEO, Aditya, who has really made out of this fight of CO2 a major step of his term. That is going on. That's the reason also why I think ArcelorMittal first has been, I would say, is the first company who has explained the right way how to come to carbon neutrality. Second, that's the reason also why we have invested in many pilot technologies in order to see what is the best technology in order to reach the goal, given the specific situations in different countries or in different circumstances, knowing that there is probably not one solution for all.
Now, third one, to say, "Okay, and this would be the CapEx project we would like to implement." Parallel to that, we have seen basically all the governments in Germany, in Belgium, in France, in Spain, everywhere. Then we have discussed this is what we have in mind. Can you help us to do that? Because then we can also help you as a country and drastically reduce the emissions of CO2, which are there. Given that, in particular in Europe with ETS system, carbon today has a price.
Yeah.
This is part of the equation, and it is a significant cap. Because today, one in ton of emission rights, the market price is more than EUR 70. If you know or if you recall that we need 2 tons
Yeah.
Of emission rights in order to produce one ton of steel, that means, in theory, that in an alternative new technology, you can be a little bit more expensive in OpEx.
Yeah.
Because you do not have to pay for emission rights. That is also which is part of our subject. It is a good point for our governments, because the governments have taken for their country's commitments how much to reduce, and they need contributors. We say, "This is a win-win strategy for our governments, for the countries we are in, and for ourselves." That is really at the basis of our strategy, and I think we can be very happy now to meet it. There's only one caveat on that, and that means that the European decarbonized steel industry needs to be set on a level playing field with imports in order to make possible that steel can continue to be exported from Europe to outside.
Yeah.
This handicap, this cost handicap, needs to in some way to be solved. In particular also, if you have Russian or Chinese steel which is heavily carbon-intensive, it cannot come free to Europe. That's the reason why, with the European Commission, there's this discussion about and the agreement in principle-
The sort of Carbon Border.
In order, there will be the carbon border tax.
Yeah. Is that going to actually work out, or is it gonna become an administrative nightmare?
I think it will work out. Question will be, how will the details look at it? We don't know it yet because the details have not yet been decided. Today we need that we see two elements where the policy needs to be improved. The first one is that the European steel industry can continue to export and that this cost-negative cost differential, because it's cheap, it's more expensive to produce carbon-free steel than steel which emits a lot of carbon. That this needs to be compensated. Then the second one is, I give you an example.
For example, you want to import, or a European industry wants to import a machinery from China which is made out of steel, and the steel component is significant part of the total cost. How can we be sure that there will not be a transfer of industrial activity from Europe outside in order to overcome.
Sure.
This problem needs still to be discussed, but that is really industrial policy for Europe and that needs to be discussed, let's say, with the Commission at the highest level and with the different industry ministers.
You mentioned China. Historically, it seems to me that China has always been a bit in your bad books as an entity that really has been dumping excess steel on the market. This seems to have changed. Has it, is the-
Mm-hmm.
If it has changed, is the change permanent? I mean, if you look at the Chinese economy. It is slowing down from its previous heights. In a sense, Xi Jinping seems to be making China as an economy more isolated than before, and certainly more domestically demand driven. Is the discipline on steel manufacturing in China a permanent feature? Will things like Evergrande financial problem affect the whole of the Chinese economy? I mean, how do you see China being as a competitor to you and as a market and as a potential ally, I suppose?
I would say, if I look at the situation today, I think it's fair to say that today the situation with China is under control. With China, you never know because China is not a market economy, and it is not market behavior which is directing what firms are doing. Now, it is under control, but it is also under control, I would say, for two reasons. One reason is that the world has realized 3, 4, 5 years ago that China was massively dumping and countervailing. Hence, we have seen in most of the jurisdictions today actions taken, which means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Chinese steel companies to export to these countries.
That applies for the U.S., but it applies also very largely to Europe, to Australia, to Brazil, to many, many jurisdictions, in particular, to those jurisdictions which operate by themselves a steel industry, which is quite important. I think also there is a second element in it, and that's purely the Chinese one. The Chinese realize also today, as they have been also heavily attacked in Glasgow, that CO2 emissions is very serious. If you look now, exporting simply steel and especially commodity steel is probably not the most profitable way how to let your company grow.
If you see the pollution situation in China, you really have good ground to believe that the Chinese are on the way not to push too much their steel industry because they need cleaner air. They need to document that they are not growing their CO2 emissions when the rest of the world or when the industrialized world, and China is today part of this industrialized world, is decreasing. I think that we are doing that.
From that point of view, we believe that there is a lot of logic and a lot of reasons which would explain why, in the future, the Chinese steel industry should try more or less to restructure, to concentrate, but definitely not to further grow for exports, but at the same time also work for new technologies and to try also to be more energy efficient and more CO2 efficient.
Oh, sorry.
No, no. That's fine.
No, before I ask Hetal to relay some of the shareholders' questions, can you say a word or two about United States? I mean, the Trump era is over, for the moment anyway.
Mm-hmm.
The Section 232 mechanism is up, I think, for renegotiation or perhaps is gonna be phased out. How do you see the relations between Europe and the U.S. in terms of the steel market developing? Also from a domestic point of view, 'cause you are quite big in the States, how do you see the Biden infrastructure bill helping you?
A very big question which will take us an hour to...
It's a big industry.
... to answer it. In order to be short, maybe first of all, in the U.S. market, under Trump, was the market which was the most ring-fenced-
Mm-hmm
... among others. As before the Trump administration came into place, the U.S. market was largely served also by imports. Trump made that drastically more expensive and strongly reduced imports. Hence, you had even a bigger scarcity in and a bigger tightness in the steel supply-demand schedule than you had in Europe. The consequence of that was that, and is still today, that U.S. prices are still, I would say, a certain more expensive than European prices today, and hence, a very profitable element. Now, this has been followed by new investment decisions in the U.S. in new capacity. These new capacities are only mainly electric arc furnace scrap-based, and not blast furnace integrated.
You see, continuing the trend we have seen in the United States over the last 30 years, where you have had a continuous decline of the part of the integrated steel mills versus the mini mills. And which today the mini mills are the market leaders, and I will say also the price makers on the U.S. market. Now, in this context, maybe I have also to—I would like to say a word that, in this context, ArcelorMittal, you remember, has decided over the year to sell its assets in ArcelorMittal USA, which are integrated.
We decided to sell them to Cleveland-Cliffs, which is probably a good solution for Cleveland-Cliffs, because Cleveland-Cliffs has iron ore base and the ArcelorMittal iron ore base were on the way to be depleted, so we did not have really a solution how to supply with iron ore our own mills. For Cleveland-Cliffs today, they become integrated, and they can better manage over the next years their, also their production of iron ore. What you have to see is that in the long run the trends of reducing the part of blast furnaces will continue.
Second, there is a need for strong CapEx because the U.S. mills were not the last mills which had been built in terms of modern mills in the U.S., so some more cash requirements. Third, this whole CO2 problematic needs to be challenged also in these mills. I think the full combination of that there was no longer a fit with iron ore, the long-term prospects of this made this deal with Cleveland-Cliffs was probably very good for Cliff, but definitely was also the right strategic move for ArcelorMittal. Now, in the meantime, the consequence was that our market share in the U.S. has significantly decreased, but we are remaining today in NAFTA with very strong assets. We have three big assets in NAFTA.
The first one is Dofasco.
Yeah.
I would say it's the best integrated mill in NAFTA, but there also we have negotiated with the Canadian government a transition path towards lower CO2. We have Calvert, which is the most modern finishing facility...
Yeah.
...in the world. There we have decided to integrate this plant by building a new electric arc furnace for, at the beginning, I would say, 25% of, or 30%, of slab mills, but possibility to enlarge these activities so that Calvert will be partly integrated, which will be quite nice also in terms of supply chain, reducing working capital and in terms of profitability and of supplying green steel. Then our third asset in NAFTA is Mexico. There we will commission this year a new hot-strip mill, so we are going downstream in order to be more present in the NAFTA market with finished steel. Really a nice strategy with high, I would say, world-class assets on the three locations.
From that point of view, definitely our competitive strengths in NAFTA is strongly improving compared to the past due to the different aspects of the strategy. I just tried to briefly explain.
I like the way you still talk of NAFTA, when Trump managed to call it USMCA. I think everybody understands. Hetal, any questions from you on our-
Actually, John, just as another follow-up to the U.S. NAFTA discussion, just to reiterate, when can we see or expect to see some benefits of the U.S. infrastructure bill in the U.S., and how much of this demand improvement can you expect to capture?
Okay. Yeah. Yeah, indeed, I forgot this aspect to answer. I think it's a very big one because for everyone who spends some time in the U.S., we have seen that the infrastructure is extremely poor and that a lot needs to be done in terms of rail infrastructure, in terms of bridges, in terms of many things. That is precisely where the U.S. infrastructure bill will help. We can see that this will definitely give an additional demand in the long run for the next 5-10 years, every year, several million tons, which will add to the apparent steel consumption in the United States.
Now, even if, as a supplier, you don't produce the products which go directly in these infrastructure products, it will be beneficial for the overall steel supply and demand balance. It will be a strong support also for pricing. It will definitely be also a good opportunity for us, and also it will partly absorb some of the new capacity which is coming on stream in some of the mills, including, as I told you, in Calvert, for example, where we have our own electric arc furnace.
Hetal, more?
Yeah. Actually, there's a change in tack a bit actually onto mining. How do you see your mining strategy going forward, and can you provide an update on your Liberia expansion project, please?
Okay. First of all, one of the lessons of 2021 has been that the combination of iron ore with steel is quite a fantastic asset, because we have seen, in particular in Q3 also, a very strong contribution to the overall profits by the mining division. It lengthens the value chain. It is useful. It is reducing the risks of the overall risks of the company, provided that your iron ore base is competitive one.
That's the reason also why the strategy of ArcelorMittal is, first of all, to make sure that the different mines, in particular the mines which are not directly next to an integrated plant, so the non-captive mines, those who are on the seaborne markets, are extremely competitive and have a very high quality product. That is the case for the two big mines we have in this domain, and which is AMMC, so our Canadian mine on one hand side and Liberia on the other one. One word about Canada is that this mine is very competitive from a cost point of view.
It is excellent quality, and we just have now decided together with the Canadian authorities to transform our pellet plants into DRI pellets, which will be the product of the future also for low carbon steelmaking. From that point of view, I would say in the long run, AM/NS is really a strong basis for the future. Now, in Liberia, we had produced DSO, so that was in fact iron ore which was not beneficiated, and there we came at the end of our reserves, and the question was, what will we do?
We had a long-term plan in place and already started some of the CapEx in order to restructure or to structure differently our Liberian mines by changing them into making higher quality iron ore through a beneficiation effect. What we have decided was to launch this investment which is done parallel with a strong increase of our available capacity. We had been in the last years around 3 million tons. We had before nominal capacity of 5 million tons, and we will go now progressively to 15 million tons of high quality iron ore fines which can be used in our process.
What is also very important is that from a logistical point of view, this gives additional savings because going from Liberia to Europe is obviously much less expensive than going from Australia and even from Brazil. It will be excellent quality with an optimal logistics. From that point of view, I think also for our European mills, they will be in the long run very much can be supported by our Liberian project.
Talking of CapEx, I imagine that you are quite relieved that Ilva is no longer something that has to show in the results. On the other hand, CapEx is your initiative in India seems to be going extremely well. Can you just say a few words on both those?
Ilva, I think that in the meantime, and due to the circumstances we were facing in Italy, also due to the COVID difficulties, due to the heavy discussion, and the will of the local authorities to renegotiate the environmental issues of the plant, we needed to come to a new solution. I think ArcelorMittal is a responsible company. We thought that the best way would be to try to have the authorities, the government on board. The consequence of that was that the government was saying, "I don't want to be a sleeping partner. I want to be a full joint venture partner."
Hence, the consequence of that is that in today's situation, ArcelorMittal is a JV partner with the Italian government, but the consequence of that is also that the full restructuring of Ilva will be financed outside the ArcelorMittal balance sheet, and specifically on the basis of the balance sheet of Ilva and maybe with the necessary support of the Italian government because also a strong decarbonization effect in it. We hope that this is the right answer. We hope now that all stakeholders will very strongly and positively work on this new concept. Our hope is that this new reorientation will work, but we won't be solely responsible for its execution because it is today on a standalone basis.
Ilva is selling on a standalone basis. We are present in the board. We are having discussions, but we are not directly operating Ilva as a fully consolidated company. So that's for this. Now, second question is about India. I think it's a totally different story because India, in fact, is a growth story. India today consumes basically 100 million tons of steel. It is foreseen that this will double by the end of the decade and maybe triple somewhere in the thirties. The acquisition of Essar, which was an opportunity because it was the kind of Chapter 11, was a unique opportunity for ArcelorMittal to move.
We decided to move it together with our colleagues from Nippon Steel, who are also invested in AM/NS India, as you know. We decided to move there with ArcelorMittal Mittal owning 60% of the joint venture and Nippon Steel 40%. The year 2021 has been very, very good for Essar. We have seen there a very strong management. We are running full. EBITDA margins are absolutely good. We have developed there also our strategic plan, how to grow from 7.4 million to 8.4 million tons, and then to 12-14 million tons, with a long-term view that we have today.
We believe the possibility to grow up to 30 million tons and hence at least keep our market share, and then in particular due to the quality of Nippon Steel and of ArcelorMittal, also in technical things, that we will be the supplier of choice for the very technical steel products on the Indian markets, what probably our competitors cannot really offer. This is a really good opportunity, and I think that everyone is very keen, how to say. Now, in terms of CapEx, you are right.
There is a lot of money which is involved, but what you need to realize is first that in India, CapEx is less expensive than, for example, in Western world, because, for example, also labor cost in a CapEx is all the time a very big component. It's much cheaper. Second, as a country, as a company is very profitable and doesn't have too much debt and has the financial capability, we believe that this expansion plan can be financed through its own cash flow it generates. From that point of view, really a nice opportunity. Remember, we start with 7 million tons. We want to land with 30 million tons, and that could be financed through the benefit of the company.
Really a nice project, and I think it should also very much please our investors.
Do you see any other potential opportunities? Because surely if there are opportunities for M&A or joint ventures, it could be at the expense of your plans for returning more money to the shareholders and for share buybacks.
That's not really the issue today. Today, we are saying that we have quite a lot of opportunities, first of all, inside our own plants where we have growth opportunities. I give you some examples. The hot-strip mill in Mexico, we are investing in downstream in Brazil. We have the mining project in Liberia, but also some mining projects in Brazil and Mexico in order to support our 2 plants there and to make them more competitive. We can see we have some investment in the Dofasco plus the whole decarbonization program we was discussing earlier. I think these are very big prospects.
On the other hand, in many of the jurisdictions where we are, as we are their number one in terms of steel producer, there's not so much room to further consolidate because the competition authorities wouldn't allow us to grow too much. For example, that was a problem with Ilva in Europe. We need to be careful. On the other hand, we have seen also, last but not least, I would not say there will never be an acquisition, but over the last M&A acquisitions we have done, for example, in India, also we have tried to be quite careful and try to make that compatible with a strong balance sheet.
We have suffered too much for a long run to have too much debt, especially in periods of high inflation and high interest costs, that we definitely don't want to come back to that. Because that should prevent us to, as we have some maneuvers, and if it makes sense to make a transaction to make it as it has been shown in India.
I was noticing actually one of the analysts thinking of actually now ArcelorMittal has become a blue chip company, somehow beating the economic cycle, the industrial cycle. Hetal, any. We don't have much time left, so Hetal.
Yeah, I know. I think, I'd like to raise a question actually raised by Frederic Dubreuil. Could you ask Michel how ArcelorMittal is improving its health and safety performance?
Okay. I think that's a very important question, and I would thank this investor because health and safety is on the top of our priorities. We need to know that, and I think that there is not one meeting we are having together, it being the board of directors, it being the specific committee, it being management meetings also, where we don't start with health and safety. This has given us, over time, some good progress. Today, where we are, if I look at the number of accidents we have, the systems we have in place, we have made huge progress.
We have reduced the number of accidents of recordable accidents by a factor of 5 or 6 since the beginning of the creation of ArcelorMittal, so which is very, you would say, you could be very satisfied. On the other hand, we have too many heavy accidents. When we have an accident like the one we have had in the mine in the coal mine in Kazakhstan, this is absolutely a drama inside the company. It just happened when we were finalizing the third quarter results, which was, as I told you before, the best in history. When you are then confronted with such a drama, you are, what can I say?
You are really in a terrible mood, and you turn back to everything to and you are telling you, what do we have to to do if for that not to happen? I think what is the factor is that we need to start with continuing to reduce incidents because it is, as you know, this is a pyramid. You have many incidents and then near misses and then not so severe accidents and then statistically you have accidents. The more you can avoid having incidents at the beginning, the less you have a probability of having an accident. What are we doing?
We have also made some organizational changes in the sense that we have established a health and safety council, which is chaired by the CEO of ArcelorMittal Brazil, where we have, I would say, the most solid results in terms of safety within the group. We have decided also to make safety a bigger part of the variable short-term remuneration of our managers. We are now once also with COVID helping telling people and train that everyone throughout the hierarchy of the group goes much more on the floor. Be sensitive with our people that we need to take advantage of, with that we need to pay attention in order to make a real step forward in terms of safety.
Hetal Patel, a final question from shareholders.
Perhaps going back to the actual energy cost inflation point, can you give an indication of the impact of cost increases on your business? Have you been able to pass these through for surcharges to customers in your European operations?
I think in order to calculate the cost inflation, I think it's quite easy and every investor can do it by itself. Because basically, as I told you, to produce 1 ton of steel, you need 1.5 tons of iron ore and 500 kilos of coal. On top of that, you have some needs of gas prices. But in the flat steel prices, in the flat steel industry, it is largely hedged so that the cost inflation is a little bit moved around.
In long, I would say where you have electric arc furnaces and your sole energy is electric power and gas, there the cost impact was really very high, as in particular also scrap prices went very high for two reasons. First of all, as there was a very strong demand. Second, also flat steel producers or integrated producers tend to try to increase their scrap input in the traditional BOF in order to reduce overall their CO2 emissions. So that reason scrap is in the realm of $500 per ton, which is extremely important, which is more expensive than rebar prices were one year ago also.
It's really it was a difficult thing. How do you manage this? You explain this to your customers. What we have done also is to say we need to introduce an energy or a cost surcharge due to these circumstances. When you are doing that, this is, I would say, more an education tool in order to objectively explain to your customers that the price increase is due to the cost increase. But it is not by introducing a surcharge that the price, the final price of steel will increase, because the final price is all the time a question of balance between supply and demand. That happens also.
From that point of view, the question of, which had been asked, you have not been able to impose the surcharge. Actually it is not really right. It is much more of an educational tool than to change the rules of the game, because you have to be a monopolist to change the rule of the game, and definitely we are not a monopolist, and we have to try to find. We don't want to be also a monopolist, because you want to have the long-term relationship with your customers. Our interest is that they pay a fair price on this.
Thank you. Hetal, I see another hand raised.
Yeah. Sorry. We managed to squeeze one more in, actually, on the ESG topic again, and it's really about green steel solutions under our XCarb® brand. Question is, what has been the response from customers, and are you able to command a premium to offset the additional costs?
I would say the XCarb initiative is in fact threefold. It is first to identify carbon-free steel products which can be sold to the customers. It is second an element of new technologies implemented in order to move towards carbon-free steel, and it is third an internal investment fund investing in new companies developing new technologies which are relevant for the carbon-free economy. Now, the first is green steel products.
As we implement today new technologies which reduce the burden, it is possible to isolate that and to transfer it to a specific steel product so that you can certify to a customer that he buys steel, which is zero carbon or which is very low carbon as we are doing it in long steel. This is certified by an independent expert based on a certified methodology. I would say this is something where we start now supplying. We are selling this year 720 or so thousand tons of these green steels. Very high interest from our customers. Also they are happy to, and they are ready to pay a higher price for it.
Second part of the elements, the new technologies maybe that I don't want to go totally through it, but I would recommend our readers to go on our site and to look at our Climate Action Report, because this is very well explained there, what we are doing. Then you can really see that from a technological point of view, the roadmap towards green steel is traced and that it is possible to reach it over time. The third element, it's a $500 million investment fund which is allocated roughly for the next five years, each year by $100 million, where we invest in new technologies. Could be storage technologies, kind of, batteries.
We have decided to join the initiative of Bill Gates, who has a huge plan in order to sponsor new technologies, which should aim to decarbonize the industrial economies. There we have committed $100 million, and we are participating in this fund with other top industries. This fund is managed by an internal investment team, exactly like a fund is managed by a GP, taking the decisions, evaluating. I think it will give us new insight where technology is going. We didn't speak about hydrogen, we didn't speak about other technologies which will help to go towards the decarbonization of our industry.
This is the third part of the XCarb initiative, which is, I would say, an absolutely exciting initiatives. It shows that the steel industry is really very up-to-date and a top technological industry. That is important because it is steel which is building also the new world. Without steel, the world and the modern world will not be built or reconstructed. Steel has one feature no other material has, that it is once you have produced it, you can recycle it forever each time. I think that our investors shouldn't forget. In fact, if you can bring that in link with the green or the path to green steels, then we can say we have many, many decades before us, which are extremely promising.
Michel, that's a very good note to end on. I was just looking at this, actually your roadmap.
Absolutely.
I was going to end on that. The idea of net zero by 2050, but of course another target in 2030 in Europe. I mean, we are only nine years away from that.
Mm-hmm.
How optimistic are you if we have this meeting again in 2030, will you be saluting your success or saying there's still more to do?
I think we have the will to go there, absolutely. We are not alone to deliver. That's the reason why we have had these contacts I was mentioning before with the different governments. We have MOUs signed with all of these governments, but they need also to deliver. In the meantime, we are from a practical point of view working on the different projects in order to make them happen.
Michel, [Non-English content] . Thank you very much for spending an hour with us. Thank you very much, Hetal, and thank you very much to all shareholders who are tuning in. Any questions, please send them to Hetal, his email address you have and, I'm sure he doesn't mind being bombarded, but if he does, then that's too bad. I wish you all a very, very good Christmas and festive season in the meantime. Take care. Thank you. Thank you, Michel.
Thank you. Thank you.