Good morning. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to this presentation for the fourth quarter and full year results of Acerinox, the best results in our history. My name is Carlos Lora-Tamayo, and I am the Head of Investor Relations of the group.
First of all, we hope that you and your families are well in these very difficult times, not only due to the pandemic situation, but also due to the dramatic geopolitical tension that we are living today.
The results will be presented by our Chairman, Rafael Miranda, our CEO, Bernardo Velázquez, our COO, Hans Helmrich, and our CFO, Miguel Ferrandis. It is a pleasure for us that after two years of virtual meetings, we can resume face-to-face presentation today.
Before getting started, let me remind you that this conference call is being broadcast on our website, acerinox.com, where you can find also the audited integrated annual report that includes the management report, the annual accounts, and the statement of non-financial information. With any further comments, I would like to give the floor to the Chairman. Please, Rafael, go ahead.
Good morning. I also hope that you and all your families are safe and well. As Carlos has said, and as all of you know, we have not been able to meet in person since the beginning of 2020, so two years ago. It's a real pleasure. It's like being in another world to have the opportunity to have this results presentation in a presential format.
To all of you who are here today and all those attending virtually, many thanks for being with us in this day where we are presenting a record year, the best results of our company since the last 51 years of our history. In the first slide, you have the summary of the figures of this year. We accomplished a new record in melting production with 2.6 million tons.
The EBITDA has been an all-time record, almost EUR 1 billion, exactly EUR 989 million, which represents 2.5 times higher than 2020. Beyond that, results after taxes and minorities has been EUR 572 million, the highest for Acerinox in its history.
As you can see, we have generated an outstanding operating cash flow of EUR 388 million and our debt-to-EBITDA ratio is 0.58, approximately 0.56, the lowest in the last 20 years, reaching a net debt of EUR 578 million.
Even though debt increases EUR 400 million last year in 2020 due to the acquisition of VDM, as all of you know. Our division of high-performance alloy is now normalizing its contribution to the group's profitability, which is a very good news.
As you know, in terms of shareholder remuneration, we started a share buyback program up to 4% of the share capital, and also the board of directors will propose to the next general meeting a company dividend of EUR 0.50 per share, charged to 2021.
With all this, I could say that all the objectives established one year ago has been accomplished, and we have achieved completely all these objectives. In the next slide, you have the presentation, in the next three slides, a presentation of our ESG policy and strategy. The ESG in Acerinox is becoming a key element of our strategy for the future.
The board of directors of Acerinox is promoting and supporting the ESG policy of the company and is fully committed with our ESG strategy, which is now Acerinox Positive Impact 360º. In the next three slides, as I say, you have a summary of our strategy, the concrete commitments, long-term goals established for the future, and our yearly achievements.
This slide focus in part of our ESG priorities, first of all, in the human and labor rights, where we can say that Acerinox support from its inception the UN Global Compact. Also, as you know, we have a multicultural and inclusive impeccable track record, through our plants in 4 countries and physical presence in 54 countries. We are a quality employer with 97% of permanent contracts.
The board of directors is, as you see, with a majority of 68% of independence, and we have 33% presence of women. We want to be recognized for our excellence in corporate governance, which is very important for the future. We are among the first companies in this sector to use this type of finance, the sustainable financing, linked to sustainable KPIs. Until now, EUR 456 million of financing is fully sustainable.
We have also a tax responsible policy, and a very good consequence of this has been that the international compliance assurance program of the OECD certified Acerinox as a low tax risk company. Finally, you have at the bottom of the slide the certification and collaboration, and you can appreciate the several examples of world-recognized institutions that Acerinox collaborates with in terms of ESG matters.
I would like to remark the gold award of EcoVadis that we are now full members of ResponsibleSteel, and that three of our plants, Bahru Stainless, Acerinox Europa, and North American Stainless, have been awarded respectively gold, silver, and bronze by the International Stainless Steel Forum in sustainability. With that, I give the floor to our CEO, Bernardo Velázquez.
Thank you, Rafael, and good morning everybody. I think that we are in a privileged position as we have a good product. We have always been speaking about the long-lasting product made of stainless steel, the forever recyclability of our product with no losing any property in the process of being recycled.
We have a good process, so as the Chairman said, we have reviewed all our ESG concepts in order to align them to our strategy, or in order to align our strategy to this concept. We have chosen seven of the ESG objectives. Of the 17 we have chosen six, and this is what we are representing here. It is clear that we are in one of the industries that are situated in this area that is called hard to abate.
Hard to abate companies that have more difficulties to reach the CO2 neutral in 2050. In our case, we have to think that we are not a blast furnace producer, that we are starting our process with stainless steel scrap.
The best way to reduce our CO2 emissions is by using the highest percentage of scrap as possible. Now we are in more than 90% of our scrap. This is important. The results of this review of these concepts is our sustainability plan, what we call Acerinox Positive Impact 360º. From the 17 ESG chapters, we have chosen five pillars that are containing most of the most important areas where we can have influence. These pillars have been divided in 15 lines.
For this 15 lines, we have 66 KPIs, and we are normally representing in the right side of this slide the six that have a higher impact in our society. We can say that no one in our industry is better located than us in case of the diversity, as Rafael mentioned, having all races and religions in our group.
I think that in this five pillar, we are containing most of the ESG concepts and we have chosen an area that is priority action, a fast impact in our results. A second one that is for the longer time for consolidation of these aspects. We can say that the six selected KPIs for 2021 all have been positive except one. That is valorization of our waste.
This is not really a bad result because we had some troubles with the contractors that are helping us to recover our slack. This is a slack that we will recover in 2022. In 2022, it's going to be much positive. One year ago in the same virtual forum, we presented our targets for 2021.
Now what we can say today is that we have achieved all these targets, increasing high added value customers, working together with stainless steel and high performance alloys. We have been very successful in the integration of VDM, going further to our initial targets. I think that the most important thing is that we are achieving these targets in the commercial area.
That is the one that we selected to be the level to move Acerinox into high performance materials, into projects, into more added value products. We haven't forget the excellence even in the year that we have been pushing to increase our productions, but still keeping a control of the process and of our business, and generating cash and focus on shareholders' returns as cannot be other way.
We started with a tailwind that was helping us with the year, but was not an easy year for sure. I think this is one of the most difficult years that I can remember in my 31 years of experience. First of all, because we have been, you know, very active in the commercial side, pushing prices because we normally speak about market prices, but prices are something that is really negotiated item by item, customer by customer.
So this is. I think the commercial team has made an extraordinary effort to move prices up. I think that in a complex market where we have been changing from one sector to another, one of our customers were closing and some others were accelerating the production.
We have been very flexible and we reached what we have been speaking about all the past years, that is flexible. We need to be flexible in a very volatile environment. So I think we can be proud of this. Our teams did an extraordinary effort.
First of all, because we reached a new historical record with 20% less people than in the previous record in 2006. Not only that, because the absenteeism with COVID was something that you know that we couldn't control, and we had to mix people from different lines.
We had to use at the maximum level the versatility of our people, but unfortunately, we also had to stop some line for the lack of people due to quarantines and infections. We suffered operational issues with lockdowns in Malaysia 2 months and a half, floods in Germany, strikes and everything.
We suffered as most of the industries in the world, the energy cost, mainly in Spain, logistics cost and we have to say that also we are proud that not have disruptions in our supply chain. I think several years ago, we organized a diversified source of suppliers from different regions and from different suppliers.
We didn't have any important supply chain disruption this year. We are proud of the result that we have obtained. We have to be very grateful to our workforce for their outstanding efforts. Let me explain the description of the framework which we run our business in 2021.
I think the starting point was that we had a very strong and fast recovery after November, after the good news of the vaccines. That, at that time, all the market of the whole supply chain in the world was at a very low level.
You know, the stocks were at a very low level, so we needed to accelerate our production process trying to fulfill the necessities of our customers. That showed the idea of lack of material, lack of enough production in the world, what is not true.
We didn't have enough material to supply, you know, the normal consumption plus the refilling of stocks. At the end, this process let us increase our production and let us increase our prices.
This was the initial frame, of course, with a cost inflation impacting all the value chain in a complex market that I mentioned, but with a very solid stainless steel demand, with an improving market in high-performance alloys.
With this effect of the freight cost and the lack of availability of freights that we have been experiencing, and it's not negative for us. With the disruptions of the supply chains with COVID, plus the problems in the Suez Canal, you know, the customers all around the world started to review the supply chains to have closer suppliers.
If you add to this the cost and availability of freights, plus the disruptions in the supply chain, plus trade measures in some of the areas, I think that we are entering in a more regionalized world than before. The consequences in the U.S. has been a very strong apparent consumption. Inventory remain low.
Prices increase. Imports increase as well, but because our customers are desperate trying to find more materials. I think it's positive and negative. Section 232 has been reviewed, but the most important thing is that nobody's questioning now that Section 232 will remain in the United States. With, of course, as we forecasted, negotiating with the traditional partners, as Japan or the EU or probably U.K. will come very soon.
This is not bad for the industry because it's more or less the imports are balanced with the imports that are being exempted today. Same in Europe, 17% up in the flat products apparent demand. Also imports increased with base prices very, very high. Of course, energy prices rocketed.
With more activity in the EU Commission to fight against the unfair trade. We have a potential anti-subsidy against Indonesia and India that is in the last phase of the process, and we are optimistic about this. Asia is also changing, you know, also with a very strong recovery with China eliminating the export rebates. They didn't want to produce to export.
They wanted to concentrate their efforts on the raw materials and these resources inside the country. They also withdrew the anti-dumping against Indonesia and other countries. They opened China to receive material from other countries, but countries where the Chinese producers are producing now, like Indonesia.
Prices also went up in the region. Korea also entered into this, the number of countries with trade measures against other countries, and put an anti-dumping to many of the Asian players. Stock levels remain under control. Overcapacity remains as a structural risk.
In last year and probably this year as well will not be as dangerous as it was before, because it's being concentrated more in China and China is reducing the number of projects that they are building, more focused in Indonesia. I think this frame was very positive for our activity. Miguel, I will give you the floor.
Thank you. If you go now to explain the main figures for the year. First of all, I want to remark that as every year at this time, all the financial statements, the annual report for Acerinox Group is fully available at the webpage. We make a big effort to reaching this point when we present our results with all our figures fully audited.
They have been audited this year by PricewaterhouseCoopers as the previous ones. All of them are fully available. It's a relevant pack of a lot of valuable information. I strongly recommend you to read it for your analysis, for your understanding of our business, and also for putting in value all the results that we have been achieving this year. Our main divisions have performed extremely well, recovering, coming from the previous year.
In the stainless is very clear. We have obtained this EBITDA figure of EUR 929 million. As average for the year is a 16% EBITDA margin, which is no doubt a very, very strong figure. We shall go later on in further details, but it's clear that the stainless business is running well and healthy in all of our units, even though all the issues that we have been facing and all the challenges and disruptions that Bernardo has explained.
The stainless is performing extremely healthy. I think this year, the tailwind we are experiencing is also allowing to realize and have more visibility of all the homework and all the improvements that we have been achieving and performing in the last years.
In regard to the high performance alloys, this is the first year of a full integration in twelve months of the high performance alloys division. VDM was acquired late March 2020. We have been passing through the COVID crisis, obviously, also in the high performance alloys.
As you know, because we have explained, the rhythms of this division are a bit different from those of stainless. The correction came a bit later, and also the recovery has come a bit later than for the stainless division.
In any case, we have normalized in this year EBITDA margin of 8% in the high performance alloys division, and we are well prepared in these improvements in competitiveness that we are working on in VDM.
We are very, very well prepared also for taking advantage of the good momentum and of the good order book we are achieving now for the high-performance alloys. If we go to the figures of last quarter, first of all, one of the issues to remark is that normally the fourth quarter is the seasonal slowdown.
In our case, as we are more exposed to the American market, which is our main market. The fourth quarter in the States normally is a more weak quarter, keeping in mind that it's less activity, especially from Thanksgiving to Christmas time. This case has not been so. The fourth quarter has been the strongest of the year in a record year in our profitability and in our business as has been 2021.
The best quarter has been the fourth one. I think this is an issue to remark the good momentum that we are actually experiencing. We have obtained EUR 388 million, which is 8% above the very, very strong and successful EBITDA we mentioned and disclosed for the third quarter.
For a final quarter has been absolutely remarkable figures. What's also very relevant to state is the cash flow we have been generating in the quarter. We have generate an operating cash flow of EUR 204 million. With this cash flow, we have been able to reduce our net financial debt.
You can appreciate that we finished the year with a net financial debt of EUR 578 million, which means, roughly speaking, a reduction from the coming year and also from the coming quarter of around EUR 190 million.
Most of the cash flow generated in the fourth quarter has been specifically to reduce the net debt of the company. The quarterly evolution is very, very self-explaining, so I don't think it's needed a lot just to put on value this chart. It's 6 consecutive quarters of EBITDA growth.
What is also for us more relevant, as we shall mention later on and probably in the Q&A, is that still we do not appreciate signs of tiredness. It's not only 6 consecutive quarters of growth, but the market remains strong.
We are not considering by far that we have passed through a peak and we think still that we have a substantial room for growth. If we go for our main divisions, just concentrating first in the stainless steel, as we have mentioned before, when we analyze all our business units, at the end, the main conclusion today should be that more or less we are working with firing on all cylinders.
We are very well diversified. As you know, we are geographically diversified with our four plants. This is one of our main virtues. What's relevant at this time is that being diversified, the performance everywhere in the fourth quarter has been remarkable, even though the disruptions and challenges. Fortunately, the fourth quarter has not had big issues.
Consequently, we have been able to take advantage of the good momentum almost everywhere. In the case of Malaysia, which was obviously our Bahru, was affected in the second and third quarter by the official shutdown imposed by the Malaysian government. In the fourth quarter running full, we have obtained double-digit EBITDA.
In the case of Columbus, we have also benefited by the good momentum. In this regard, we must put value on the fact of the diversification in our product mix in Columbus. Thanks to our previous CapEx, especially for example, in the ladle furnace, we have been able to diversify the product mix there.
All the divisions in Columbus, the mild steel and the stainless steel, both for the local market and for export, has been running very, very satisfactory. Columbus also has been a great contributor to the profitability of the fourth quarter. After Acerinox Europa being the one with more pressure, especially by the utilities and the energy costs, but also has been improving its profitability, and then NAS is keeping its rhythm.
Consequently, the results for the Stainless division with this quarterly EBITDA margin of 18% shows the good momentum we are passing through. When we go to the high-performance alloys, it's also clear that we have been able to normalize pre-COVID levels. We mentioned this when we explained the third quarter figures. We achieved a EUR 21 million EBITDA, 10% margin.
In the fourth quarter, the profits or the EBITDA should have been equivalent with EUR 21 million. As we have mentioned before, we are making several improvements and contributions for increasing competitiveness for the coming quarter.
We have had certain adjustments at the quarter and at the year-end, but for putting this division also in very good shape for taking advantage of the good momentum that the High-Performance Alloys now are achieving.
Consequently, we are starting 2022 in excellent position for taking advantage of this excellent order book we are achieving in the High-Performance Alloys division. This is for us the most relevant fact to mention.
When we go to the slide of the cash flow, I want probably to take a bit more time for explaining this slide which probably is one of the most relevant for understanding now our actual situation and is the extremely satisfactory cash flow generation we are achieving, and especially the flexibility that this provides us.
I want to start just mentioning in the lower side of the slide. If we go to the full year 2021, you can see as always we explain that the driver of our cash flow generation obviously is the working capital. The circumstances of this 2021 in which gradually all the market, all the areas have been recovering, has created that we have experienced an increase in working capital of EUR 460 million.
At the end when I mention flexibility, it's clear that you need flexibility for taking advantage of the good momentum of recovery in the market, but keeping in mind that this may imply that you must absorb this cash out, which means financing this huge raise in working capital. We have been effectively covering that.
In addition, we have obviously been able not only for keeping our CapEx and also to consolidating the increase in return to shareholders. What we must have is flexibility for facing every time of the cycle. In any case, for understanding also the time or what we can expect for 2022, we must put it in value with the figure of the fourth quarter.
You see that the rise in working capital for the full year, EUR 460, when we analyze the fourth quarter, has been a lower figure than in the previous quarters. What this means is that as gradually we have putting all the units on full capacity utilization, but now for the fourth quarter, we are almost achieve what means running full.
As all the units have been running at high levels of output, the increase of working capital has been less. Consequently, as we have had less necessities of financing working capital because we already were running full, this means that the cash flow that we have been generating, as we mentioned before, has been fully to reduce our net debt.
This is something which I wanted just to remark for understanding what we may expect for the coming year. Running full, keeping in mind whatever may occur with the raw materials. We understand that also the cash flow generation we may achieve in 2022 should probably have a big effect also on reducing net debt for the group.
Another issue I want to remark in this slide, which also is relevant, is in terms of the cash flow we have been generating in the year. You can see the free cash flow figure of EUR 297 million, and then we experience a dividend payment to our shareholders of EUR 145 million. This means free cash flow after dividends of EUR 153 million in this year.
The equivalent figure for the period April to December in the previous year was 249. What I want to remark is that we raised our debt in March 2020 for acquiring VDM with EUR 398 million.
Since the first of April of last year, we have generated a free cash flow after dividend of EUR 402 million. What I want to say is that in these 21 months, we have been able with the cash generated by the business to fully cover the acquisition and the integration of the net debt of VDM.
This is already fully paid and consequently all the contribution that our High-Performance Alloys division should bring to the business, and we are talking of normalized EBITDA of EUR 80 million-EUR 90 million should be for free because at the end we have more than covered the cost of acquiring this business.
I think this is the expected level of returns you can realize that we mentioned when we announced and were so satisfied of the acquisition of VDM and consequently our diversification through High-Performance Alloys.
Good morning, everyone. I would like to share with you some of our important steps forward in our corporate strategy in 2021. Due to the acquisition of VDM, we considered it was very important to update our mission and vision statements.
I will go briefly through our mission which we consider very important. It's to create the most appropriate high performance materials for each application our customers might need and at the same time contribute to the progress and quality of life in a sustainable society.
This is a very important statement. The strategic pillars we have in front of you and all the values remain the same and we consider those are very recognized in the marketplace by our customers and all our stakeholders. Moving to page 17.
We consider that corporate strategy is not only a one-year planning exercise, but it's something we need to have in front of us and we work towards achieving all those short-, medium-, and long-term results when we set out to satisfy all our stakeholders. You want to move to the next one? I would like to share some of the accomplishments our teams have done through 2021.
In our excellence pillar, everything we do starts by taking care not only about our own employees but as well our contractors in our premises. Therefore we set safety as our number one priority in everything we do. Our operation teams have worked very hard and managed to reduce our lost time incident rate by 32%.
Even though we are not happy with the result and we continue to drive through everyone focused on getting a long-term goal of zero incidents in our operations. Our customers continue to recognize us globally for the quality and we thank them for the continuous trust in the Acerinox Group. We have received several recognitions from customers through 2021.
Excellence is one of our core values and one way to materialize is through our continuous improvement projects and our Excellence 360. In 2021 we made significant progress and managed to recover part of the time lost through COVID-19 in 2020 and have achieved 80% of our accumulated savings that we had put in target for these years.
In our value-added pillar, the VDM integration is a success story as you have heard and we have really made the possibility to convert it in transformation lever for the whole Acerinox Group. We managed to generate more than EUR 12 million in synergies in 2021 which is 51% above our target for the year.
In 2021 we created as well our innovation committee chaired by Bernardo Velázquez, our CEO, and we will continue to fill new products and ideas for the markets and all divisions of the group. In the strong balance sheet, Miguel recovered very well.
We continue to focus on cash generation and efficient capital allocation which allows us to provide value to our stakeholders including evidently our shareholder returns. In 2021 as mentioned before we achieved our lowest net financial debt ratio since the last 20 years.
In our sustainability pillar we all know how important is and will be sustainability in the broader sense. In 2021 we were recognized by EcoVadis with the golden level. We have continued to work very hard as our CEO explained before in all fronts of sustainability.
We are very proud about the efforts done by all our teams around the world giving back to the communities where we live and work even through the very difficult times of COVID-19. I would like to thank all our employees not only for the outstanding results mentioned before but also for the great job done towards achieving also our long-term goals set in the multi-year strategic plans. Acerinox represents in the best way what we call the circular economy. Can we go to the next page?
These are some of our targets for the period 2021-2025 in our strategic plans. Safety remains our first priority and we want to achieve by 2025 3.1 lost time incident rate based on 1 million work hours. Sustain our EBITDA levels above 10%. Maintain our net financial debt ratio over EBITDA by 1.2 over the cycle and generate more than EUR 140 million savings through our excellence plans and last but not least deliver on the defined integration synergies of more than EUR 22 million.
We have tried to give you a short explanation on how was the market in 2021. Let me just take some conclusions of this. You know that in 2021 we had of course the tailwind but we were very well positioned for this market recovery because of the previous homework that we did in the previous year and we could generate this EBITDA record.
Also, as Miguel mentioned, given our intense cash flow and balance sheet focus our net debt is now at the level of a pre-VDM level. Of course cost inflation remains a challenge but until now we have been able to pass this cost to our customers. We are in a good situation and I wanted to point out here of something about the geopolitical situation. Of course speaking about Russian and Ukrainian tensions.
The situation is really uncertain. On one hand, we don't have an important direct exposure to this risk, but who can say that this out of this, you know? I think that will affect to all the world. It's going further. I think that we have enough supplies and our position is very good, but nobody can say what is going to be the prices of these supplies.
In our case, we are exposed to Russian raw materials in nickel prices, especially in Germany. But since several months, we have been changing our strategy and moving to other suppliers. And we think that we will be able very soon to change our strategy or our sourcing there if it is needed.
In the case of our customers, in several newspapers, we have read that the Acerinox has a great exposure to these risks, but it isn't true. Because, you know, in 2021, only 0.45% of our sales were to Russia. We are almost out of this region.
We have been concentrating in our main markets that are United States, Europe, South Africa, and so on. The risk is very limited and is no more or even less than most of the industrial companies in the world. We cannot forget the situation. What we can say until now, this is our reality today, is that market conditions remain very strong.
We have contract prices and we have renegotiated our prices with end users for starting first of January. Our visibility is good for almost the whole first half of 2022. We have a longer visibility than ever or at least than in the last 15 years, and our prices are better than in the fourth quarter of last year. We are optimistic.
Stainless steel will continue to give excellent results. The HPA division is now in pre-COVID levels and increasing. Our order book is also very positive. We have a new record in our order book and increasing prices, so we are also optimistic.
For us, our reality is that, you know, we expect a good first half of the year. We can say that Q1 is going to be better than Q4, so it will be the seventh consecutive month increasing our EBITDA. Having said this, we are open to your questions, and we can start the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you very much for this presentation. As Bernardo said, we move now to the Q&A session. We will start first with questions here in the room, and then we will take your questions from the conference call and web. Here is a question. Please, microphone.
Yes. Francisco Riquel from Alantra. Congratulations for the results, and thank you for organizing this presentation again physically. Two questions for me. First one, I appreciate the guidance in terms of EBITDA that you have given. I wonder if you can comment on the outlook for margins, in particular, cost inflation, freight costs, energy costs in Spain and overall for the group.
If you believe that the realized prices that you are obtaining now that you are rolling over the contracts will more than offset this cost inflation or not in this start to the year, first half of the year. The second question is in capital allocation for 2022.
Should we expect another build in working capital or not? If you can update on the plans for CapEx. In terms of shareholder remuneration, you have given a target debt to EBITDA of 1.2x. I wonder what is left in terms of shareholder remuneration, and if you can comment on the through-the-cycle EBITDA that you are using in this target. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Paco. I think that for your first question, more or less, our message is clear for Q1. I think our margins, percentage, EBITDA margins are going to be the same or slightly higher than in Q4.
Just to only say that, the only thing that I can say. In prices, I think we have been renegotiating strongly since last September. Remember that September 2020 was a very weak position for all the suppliers. We have been able to increase prices today. Maybe our CEO can give you further explanations.
Thank you, Bernardo. Our teams globally did a good job, I think, changing the price structure into a base plus surcharge alloy, and that allows us to have new contracts starting in January this year, which are reflecting those changes. We expect those to cover only those costs. On CapEx?
Yeah, regarding CapEx, our target for this year is to increase from a target of EUR 100 million for 2020. We will go up to EUR 145 million in 2022. I think with this amount of money, we are keeping all our equipment updated. We are investing in actualization of all the equipments, and that means that is also sustainability, you know.
Because every time it is difficult for us to distinguish between investments for organic growth or investment for sustainability, because all the investments, all the CapEx are going to reduce our CO2 emissions, are going to increase our efficiency and these things. In this EUR 145 million, we'll be able, you know, to actualize our equipment.
It will include all the maintenance, sustainability, digitalization, and the organic growth. That cannot be otherwise. We have to keep more or less the rhythm of the growth of the markets in where we are. Now, this is the idea, you know.
And also keeping a safe position to afford if it is possible and if we find the right thing, you know, something like we did in VDM, you know. Always ready and conservative, trying to find new opportunities.
In terms of shareholder remuneration, Francisco, you know very well that our company likes to maintain a sustainable dividend. We have been doing that since the very beginning of the times, and even in the times of the difficulties we have applied a scrip dividend, as you know.
Also, nowadays, we are trying to remunerate our shareholders through the share buyback programs. In this moment, you know we have one who will try to cover 4% of the total 8% of shares launched at in the scrip. During the three years we have a scrip.
No decision has been taken, but if we do not find any important opportunities or value-added opportunities for our shareholders, of course, if we have cash free or free cash flow, of course, we will. I'm sure the board will decide. In terms of dividend, as I say, I think it's important to maintain a sustainable dividend in a company in a business which is very cyclical.
Nevertheless, again, I'm sure that if we do not find other opportunities in which we will deliver more value to our shareholders, why not to decide in the future. That's a question that has not been yet decided.
Just one on the build in working capital.
Yes. On the net working capital, as we previously mentioned, we are running full. If the effects on the net working capital shall not be coming by a substantial increase in volume, but a substantial increase in price, if it comes mostly by whatever occurs with the nickel, which obviously, as has been stated, due to the Ukrainian crisis, there is a bit uncertainty.
In general, in a normalized scenario, if not were for these circumstances, this should not be a year for a huge increase in net working capital. Net working capital has been the main cash out for 2021, but should not be the one for 2022.
As has been previously mentioned, just in terms of retribution, not only with the dividend, but also with the 4% increase of the 4% buyback that Rafael mentioned. This means a cash out in terms of shareholder retribution of around EUR 270 million, roughly speaking.
The second usage of the cash flow, as Bernardo mentioned, should be the CapEx, which has been scheduled for around EUR 150 million. In a normal scenario, raising working capital should be lower, but it may depend on what occurs with the nickel. In the first quarter, it shall be higher because we have seen this rally. If the trend now stabilizes, this should not be a distortion in the coming quarters.
In the first quarter we shall have some effect for this increase in the nickel from December up to now to the 28th of February. Any other question here in the room? Okay, let's move now to the question from the conference call. Please, operator, go ahead.
Thank you. As a reminder for those who've joined on the telephone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Our first question comes from Luke Nelson from J.P. Morgan. Luke, your line is now open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of questions just more on the geopolitical side. You obviously talked about your exposure on sales to Ukraine, Russia, less than 0.5%. Can you maybe just talk to what extent any of your supply chain relies on Ukraine or Russia?
You talked about nickel pricing, but in terms of actual physical tonnages, and I'm thinking maybe more on scrap and specialty alloys. I suppose on specialty alloys specifically, Russia's clearly a large supplier for things like titanium. Are you seeing any incoming queries from existing or new customers to secure supply based on these geopolitical events, particularly in VDM? That's my first question.
Good morning, Luke. Thank you for your question. As I mentioned, our exposure to Russia/Ukraine is very limited. We are not sourcing scrap from Russia, nor from Ukraine. We are not sourcing ferroalloys from these areas.
The only exposure is to pure nickel, LME nickel that we normally buy from Norilsk. As I mentioned, we are reducing our exposure, and we are trying to diversify our sources, and we don't think it's going to be a big problem for us.
Sorry, just in terms of the sort of incoming queries from existing or new customers in VDM, is that anything you're seeing?
No, no. The number of customers is very limited. As I mentioned, only 0.45% of our suppliers in 2021, and now we are even reducing our suppliers there. I think that we have already cut or canceled the orders that we had with the Russian customers. I think it's also, you know, our contribution, you know, to these tensions. We have no orders now with the area.
A follow-up, if I may, just on VDM. Can you remind us of what the revenue or earnings exposure, whatever the easiest, are to aerospace and to oil and gas currently?
Again, it's until now, of course, we have some exposure to aerospace that is very depressed all around the world. This is one of the sectors that still is very depressed. Oil and gas sector is improving.
Who can say that they will not be affected? We have from VDM several projects in the North Sea. Who knows what can happen with these projects in the North Sea if the situation is getting worse. Nothing with Russia, nothing with Ukraine. I hope that I have answered your question.
Okay. Yeah. That's fine. I'll jump back in the queue.
The next question comes from Seth Rosenfeld from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions today. If I can ask a little bit more on the outlook for stainless prices within Europe. Obviously we have European prices now a very wide premium to the rest of the world, especially to Asia.
Can you comment on your view of the sustainability of those prices? You commented in your prepared remarks on the regionalization of the steel market. Does that help extend the sustainability, let's say, of those big interregional spreads? I'll start there, please.
Good morning, sir. Thanks for your question. Yes, as I mentioned before, the world is regionalizing, and we see that the markets are getting more and more local. Evidently, the impact that has had through the last 18 months in terms of logistics and transportation costs has helped to that.
We see that the prices have been evolving through the year and we expect them to continue at the levels that we have them today for the coming months. Of course, the gap between European and Asian prices is important, but with the current situation, you know, most of the customers do not want to take the risk to ship material from Asia with a very long delivery time, more than five, six months.
With the uncertainty of the situation, nobody wants to enlarge, you know, this exposure to nickel prices and distances. I think that people still have a big component of the suppliers have to be sourced locally or regionally.
I think this is gonna be positive for our position, and even imports have been increasing in the last months. Still, they are not a threat for our prices. Of course, it will help us to stabilize the prices in the market now.
Our next question comes from Carsten Riek from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. My question is actually on the High-Performance Alloys business. You mentioned that you achieved already the normalized target, but we are way above normalized target in the other stainless operations.
When we look at the margins are about half of what the stainless steel operations or your other stainless steel operations return. Why is that still on that low level? Can you just talk about the EUR 7 million in optimization you put in this quarter? How do you wanna get to a higher profitability in that business? That's my first question. Thank you.
Thank you, Carsten. I will start with the first part of the question, and then I will let Miguel to explain this one-off that we had at the end of the year. I think there's a big difference between the stainless steel and the high-performance alloys businesses. In stainless steel, we depend very much on stockists, no?
That gives to the stainless steel business a kind of speculative content, no? When the stockists are empty, they try to source more materials, and then give us the possibility to increase prices. There's also some speculation with the sales of these stockists to the market, no? This is more or less what is happening in the stainless steel business. It's more volatile. It's more a cyclical business, and it's more volatile.
Remember that when we decided to acquire VDM, we mentioned that the high-performance alloys had a different cycle. I cannot say that this is not a cyclical business, but the cycle is different. First of all, because the high-performance alloys are normally sold to projects with a longer period of time. In these projects, there's no speculation.
Almost the sales to stockists are almost nothing, below 10%,. This is mainly why the cycle is different and is more volatile in the stainless steel. One day, this cycle, I hope that's very far away, you know, but one day the prices and margins in stainless steel will go down, and then high-performance alloys will remain flat. We'll say that we are lucky to have VDM and this business with us. Miguel, could you please just go to the second part?
Yes. Thank you, Carsten. Regarding VDM, keep in mind, we always have been mentioning, as Bernardo Velázquez says, this stability provides VDM contribution to our profits in an average of around EUR 7 million per month, which means EUR 84 million per annum. This should be a normalized scenario which are double-digit of around 10%.
This is the stable contribution that is more or less expected from VDM. In addition, obviously, we have the synergies that gradually are coming. When we realize the figures for the year coming from the recovery of the COVID crisis, and especially in the second semester, the figures for VDM have been EUR 60 million.
At the end, it's a remarkable figure how the recovery has been coming, especially in the second semester. What we just tried to explain in the slide is when we compare separately just the fourth quarter figures, there have been some issues taking place there.
We are going through some restructuring in terms of personnel, and we are increasing the productivity through that. There have been some valuation on actuarial issues regarding also pension funds.
There have been some stocktake adjustments on the year-end, and also there have been some works that have been achieved and maintenance work that have been achieved in the plants which could not take place previously, part because of the floods that took place in the summertime in Germany, and also part that we have been using this period, in which also the fourth quarter is certain seasonal adjustment, especially in December.
We have take the advantage of doing it at this time in order for being running full for the 2022, as we have been stating that the order book is extremely high. I don't think this is something for taking too much detail.
It's we are talking of year-end adjustments of EUR 7 million in a division which is normalized. As we have been stating, the contribution shall be normalized in the year, and the synergies shall start appreciating as we are hiring or performing better than what was scheduled initially. There is nothing to concern regarding that. When we just make these details is purely for your analysis of the fourth quarter. It's not such a relevant figure.
The next question comes from Patrick Mann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. I wanted to ask a bit about your scrap supply chain, and more specifically, you mentioned that you've gone over 90% scrap use, and it's an important part of reducing emission.
Presumably everybody is heading in that direction, and we've seen one of your peer companies in Europe actually acquire a scrap collector as part of the way of securing their supply chain. I mean, how should we think about the security of supply of scrap, and would you consider a similar type of move, especially given its importance for decarbonization? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Patrick. I think normally the European production model is always based on scrap, probably we have been in the history the most intensive in scrap utilization. The situation, I think, is still the same. There's a big difference between carbon steel and stainless steel. In carbon steel, there's two ways to produce carbon steel.
One is using blast furnaces with very high CO2 emissions and starting with iron raw material as a raw material, iron ore. In the case of electrical furnaces in carbon steel as well, they are using mainly carbon steel scrap.
What happens now with the necessity to reduce CO2 emissions? Some of the blast furnace producers are trying to move their model to electrical furnaces, so they will need more carbon steel scrap.
There will probably be a lack of carbon steel scrap in the future, you know, and some of the producers are moving to iron pellets. You know, it's a different story. In the case of stainless steel, we are all producing with stainless steel scrap since many years ago. We are the same players, the same 4 players that we were 20 years ago. I think the business is not going to change.
One of our competitors acquired a stainless steel scrap supplier, but this is not a big issue for us. We have enough suppliers. We are buying our stainless steel scrap mainly as much locally as we can in the United States and in Spain, but we have, you know, there's enough sources of supply.
Even we have a good relation with ELG. We don't think it is going to be a deal breaker between the stainless steel producers. I think that there's no reason to try to have a war in stainless steel scrap collecting, because you must understand that the stainless steel scrap is not produced, it's collected. The amount of scrap is the same for everybody.
If somebody wants to take the biggest portion of the cake, you know, the only thing that they are going to achieve is that the price will increase. Because at the end, we are all the stainless scrap dealers are always competing to collect more scrap than the others, so this is a question of price, not of availability. We don't think this is going to be an issue, and we are very comfortable with our situation today as the most intensive stainless steel scrap user in our business.
The next question comes from Ioannis Masvoulas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thanks for the presentation. A few questions left from my side. The first one, can you talk about the increase in CapEx this year? You mentioned some of the initiatives there, but you also alluded to organic growth opportunities.
What are you looking there? Is it more about the bottlenecking? Any product mix upgrade? Some visibility on that would be useful. Related to the growth strategy, on M&A, if you're not looking at potentially buying a scrap supplier, what is most interesting to you, stainless exposure or exposure to high-performance metals? Thank you.
Good morning, Ioannis. Thank you for your question. In regards to our CapEx investment of EUR 145 million that were commented before, a big portion of those is really for maintenance and getting our equipment into improvements that we need to do.
Most of it, as Fernando mentioned, are connected as well, evidently, through sustainability projects, because everything we do in changing any kind of piece of equipment in any of our machines globally is gonna improve our efficiency and reduce our electricity consumption, et cetera. We have as well innovation as part of those CapEx, which we're gonna be going through new projects and new products going into the market.
Evidently, we have some increases of our output in some of the markets we consider as important because the market is growing and we're gonna be keeping our output to those market growths. Mainly it's connected to maintenance activities that we have around the world.
Regarding M&A opportunities, I cannot answer your question, but I will give you a couple of tips because, you know, as you know, several years ago, Outokumpu acquired ThyssenKrupp and AST, the Italian plant, was part of this deal.
Finally, they had to resell AST because the trade commission didn't want to accept that the number of players in Europe were reduced from four to three. Having this situation in Europe, that is difficult to reduce the number of players.
Having a similar situation and even worse in the United States because there are two very strong players, that is ArcelorMittal and Outokumpu, and the rest are losing weight in the market. The M&A possibilities in the stainless steel sector is difficult.
I think it is more diversified in high-performance alloys. Also as we mentioned, we acquired VDM, and that we have been the smallest player in the stainless steel industry because most of the stainless steel plants were part of a big carbon steel group.
Now we have changed our situation, and probably we are the biggest in the high-performance alloy business. I think that we will have more opportunities in this area that we will be able to afford.
We have a question from Krishan Agarwal from Citi. Please go.
Hi. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. A couple of them have already been asked. If I can ask a quick question on costs. The Spanish energy prices have been going up. Is it fair to assume that the peak of the cost inflation from energy is already there into the Q4 and hence progressively, we are not looking for any quarter-over-quarter increase in energy costs in Europe?
Yeah, this is true. The impact of electricity and gas cost is already in Q4. Now the prices are more stable. Who knows what can happen? All the future groups tell us that probably prices will start to slow down a little bit in Europe without, of course, the new tensions, no?
We have a very positive Q4, including all this inflation cost and we expect that the situation will remain the same. I think you are right when you mentioned that this is a Spanish energy crisis because many people are speaking about the global energy crisis and this is true, but it's mainly a Spanish crisis.
I think it is important to say that 80% of our extra cost in energy in 2021 came from Spain, and Spain is only 30% of the production. Also, 80% of the extra cost coming from 30% of the production. We don't expect the situation to get worse than it was in Q4. Thank you, Krishan.
The next question comes from Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. I just have a couple of questions left as well. Could you maybe just share your view in terms of whether you believe that the impact from the partial exit from the U.S. market from ATI has fully played out by now? That would be my first question.
Sorry, Bastian, but I couldn't pick your question. Could you repeat, please?
The market exit by ATI from the S market has fully played out.
Can you repeat again, Bastian, please? We can't hear you properly.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, Bastian, could you repeat the question because we were not able to understand it.
Sure. No problem. I'll repeat again. I just was wondering whether you feel that the impact from the partial market exit by ATI from the U.S. market has fully played out by now.
I understood, Bastian. Thank you very much for your patience. I think it's a positive impact for us because ATI announced to stop producing a commodity stainless steel grade, so that gave us an opportunity in the U.S. market that we are of course taking advantage of this.
Some of the commodity materials that were previously supplied have been more open in the market and that's why some of the imports from other countries have been increasing in the American market. We don't think this is a threat for us. I think we are comfortable with this. We have demonstrated that we can be very competitive in a market where some of our competitors are not so much.
I mean, ATI is closing a business in which we are making a fortune. Maybe this is because some of them are not so competitive or maybe because we are a very competitive company. We are comfortable with this, and we don't expect that the ATI was trying to have a joint venture with Tsingshan from Indonesia to send slabs to America to be hot rolled in America, and that was stopped by the Section 232.
Since that time, we have been negotiating with the commercial department of the United States also because Allegheny was asking for some exemptions. Until now, everything is very clear that no Indonesian slabs will come to America.
Even in the negotiation in Section 232, it was very clearly stated that every material going from Europe to United States have to be European origin, melted in Europe, which is something new for the world trade, because before everything was related to certificate of origin, and you could change the certificate of origin by giving it enough transformation to the process. In this case, it's have to be melted in the United States, so there's no chance for Allegheny to start rolling slabs from Indonesia. The situation for us is very positive.
The next question is from Alain William, from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for taking my question. Good day, everybody. I have three, please. First, what would be your mid-cycle EBITDA target in EUR million, if it's possible, just to have a sense? Second question, regarding VDM.
I think at some point you said that the amount of synergies, I guess EUR 24 million was conservative. So why are you not increasing this target now? Then the third question is how has Bahru performed in 2021, and how should we think about this plant in the long run in your portfolio? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Alain. In terms of the through the cycle or mid the cycle, EBITDA target is very, very difficult to give an answer because at the end, it's also even difficult to just define for the next time to come what can be expected for the cycles.
We are coming from a decade in which more than cycles driven by economies ups and downs. The fact that has been affecting the market in the last decade has been the structural oversupply and mostly the oversupply coming from China or later from China and Indonesia. This is some of the main disruption that has occurred in our sector in the last decade.
Apparently, this is something that now appears to be more stabilized. In view of this, we can consider that for the coming term, the cycle shall be more coming by supply and demand and more linked to the pure economic ups and downs. What drives this for us, it's very difficult to say.
What we must be is prepared and be very, very flexible. As we have mentioned, we try to control the controllables and to keep the flexibility. The actual momentum is good, so it's clear that a rising tide lifts all the boats. What we must be prepared for is that we keep on sailing when the tide goes down. I think we are very, very well prepared for that.
It's very difficult to predict if the cycles now are going to be an average of EUR 300 million, EUR 400 million, EUR 500 million or EUR 700 million. Who knows? It's very difficult. What we shall be is prepared. We keep flexibility. We are prudent in our CapEx.
It has been detailed for the coming years, so we are not getting crazy over-investing. We are open to see possibilities as also has been remark of inorganic growth, and we are keeping a consistent retribution.
This is more or less what we can say, and this allows us to have the flexibility for every cycle. We are confident that we are trading at other multiples and that our EBITDA shall be at other type of margins than what has been the previous decade.
All of our units are highly profitable, have been highly profitable in the first quarter and are expected to remain so in the coming years. Consequently, we are very comfortable. It's very, very difficult to predict what should be a normalized EBITDA and especially with the actual uncertainties geopolitically.
The next question is from Robert Jackson, from Banco Santander. Please go ahead.
No, wait. Wait a minute. There are two other questions to answer.
Just let me answer your question about VDM synergies. Of course, we think as you said, that the VDM synergies are conservative. I think that we must be conservative. We prefer to not to under-deliver and fulfill what we are saying.
We are finding that the best synergies are coming from in the area that we selected as the most important one. Because we didn't buy VDM to restructure VDM. We didn't buy VDM to fire people and reduce the size.
I think that the most important role of VDM in our group is to combine with the commodity and also commodity stainless steel to offer the biggest range of products in our industry, so that if you want to build a new project, you know, a refinery or a chemical complex, whatever, you know that people will have to think in Acerinox because we will be able to supply every kind of high-performance material from the best nickel alloy to the most expensive nickel alloy to the special stainless steel.
I'm speaking about super duplex or super ferritics and this kind of stainless steel grades, and also the commodity ones, because I think if there are some commodity grades, normally it's because they are probably the best in the range of products because more people are using them.
Every new grade that with a good success and an increase in the production will become commodity. I think that we can offer the highest range of products and most of the synergies are concentrated in these areas.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID situation, we couldn't travel from plant to plant to provide the technical support. The technical part of the production, part of the synergies is a little bit delayed.
We expect that we will be able to deliver it more this year with the presential trials because it is difficult to try to roll high-performance alloys in Spain if we don't have the presence of the German technicians.
This is a situation that we are changing. If we are 50% above our targets in synergies, it is mainly because we are overachieving our targets in the commercial side. You know, the number of customers that are coming to us to buy both stainless steel and HPA or the number of customers of VDM that are coming now to buy also stainless steel, it is increasing.
This has a very good reaction in the market. We are very happy with this. Probably in the coming years, we will be able to be a little bit more aggressive in these numbers because we will be sure that we will deliver these results.
Alain, in terms of the Bahru results in 2021, they've been positive through the whole year. Even though, as was mentioned before, we had two and a half months shutdown in the plant. It was definitely much better than previous year with getting very good into the local markets in Asia and providing good results.
Regarding VDM, this question is arising every year and every year more or less answering the same things, but in a different situation. Because now we are making money in Bahru Stainless.
Now it's not a problem for the Acerinox group. We have been improving very much our process in the area. Our results in the area are now. Bahru is clearly contributing to the EBITDA of the group.
This is not a problem for us. We are comfortable with Bahru stainless. It doesn't mean that if somebody comes with a good offer, we can consider it, then we can think about it. It have to be a good offer because we are not going to sell something that is good and is making money for less than what it deserves.
The next question is from Robert Jackson from Banco Santander. Please go ahead, Robert.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Questions related to mid- to longer-term strategy. Bernardo, you mentioned that, you know, your interest in developing the special alloys. What about the distribution side, which could help to leverage VDM's position globally?
Especially looking at the North American market, where I think that it has been something you may have been looking at. Why isn't it something that you are pursuing or may not or could pursue in the longer term? Thank you.
Thank you, Robert. This is a very interesting question. You know that the distribution companies in United States are very big companies, no? They are multi-metals. No, they are more or less normally listed companies like Ryerson or Reliance.
They are listed companies, and the size in market capitalization is more or less the size of Acerinox. Mainly, you have to think that they are multi-metals and stainless steel can be 10% or 20% of their business. That means that if we enter in this business, we will have to manage 80% of sales of other materials that we don't even know today. I mean, that is not our specialty.
We are very comfortable with the way we are now with these good customers that are partners. The relation with them is excellent. NAS is always the preferred supplier in the market. We think that we must remain as we are today.
Now in Europe, the situation is different, but also this is such a big number of players that entering in one distributor could mean that you will have problems with the others. It is better, sorry. It is better to work on end users and to have a stable and reliable base of end users customers that will provide us more stability in the future.
We don't think entering in distribution further than what we already have with our service centers and with Grupinox. We don't think it's going to be a good idea.
Next question from Carsten Riek from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just one follow-up. It's on your fourth quarter crude stainless production growth number quarter on quarter. Is that representative for the shipments you had in the fourth quarter, or were the shipments better or worse? I'm just trying to get a feeling from you on your net working capital movements. Thank you.
Get the question.
Thank you, Carsten. As we said before, the volumes have been substantially high in the fourth quarter in terms of shipments. In terms of production, we had certain also adjustments due to the year-end. The figure in shipments have been high, and I think the trend is to keep in equivalent levels for Q1 2022.
We have a follow-up question from Ioannis Masvoulas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks very much. Just a couple of questions, actually. The first on the dividend. If we look at your latest announcement, you maintain the base dividend unchanged. However, with the acquisition of the high performance metals business, you have lifted through cycle free cash flow somewhere in the range of EUR 35 million-EUR 40 million.
Can you explain the cautious approach here in terms of the dividend? Secondly, we've seen strong raw material prices and energy costs. You're able to pass it through via higher stainless prices, but can you comment on any signs of a potential demand destruction that you may be seeing at current stainless prices, either in Europe or the U.S.? Thank you.
Ioannis, I said before that our idea in terms of dividend is to be cautious, but that if really we have an extra generation of cash flow, well, because it comes from VDM or comes from the stainless steel, and we do not have other or better employment of this capital.
Of course, going forward, probably we will be prepared to increase the dividend. We have a target of what should be the ratio in between our net debt and EBITDA, which is, as you know, below 1.2. Currently we are at 0.6. If this strong generation of cash flow is still being in the future
The more rational, I insist, if we don't find other sources to employ this capital, will be to remunerate the shareholders without any doubt. It's early to say. This is a decision that should be taken by the Board of Directors and also, as you know perfectly, by the General Assembly. We are not saying no, but it is not yet the right moment to decide that.
Thanks, Ioannis. It is interesting to speak about demand destruction. Of course, sometimes we are wondering if prices are too high and we can have this kind of demand destruction. Maybe we can see at the present time that some of the projects in capital goods.
This is normally more related with a hot rolled material in our case, because it is thicker than the cold rolled material. Normally, this demand is linked to projects. Maybe we are facing today a slight slowdown of this kind of materials because some of these projects are being postponed or at least delayed a little bit.
I mean, at the time that they are trying to clarify what is the uncertainty in the geopolitical, from the geopolitical side or also what is gonna be the level of prices of these raw materials, not only stainless steel for the future.
Nothing more than this. I think in cold rolled that is more related with the consumer goods, I think the demand is still very healthy, very strong. You have to think that of course, stainless steel prices have gone up and probably they are stable today.
What about aluminum or wood, plastic, petrol? You know, I think this is something that is not only related to stainless steel. Other materials that can be substitutes of stainless steel are more or less experiencing the same situation. No, no fears for this.
We have another follow-up question from Krishan Agarwal from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Can you clarify or give us an update on your scrap sourcing? I presume you have longer term volume contract. Can you also comment on how the pricing of the scrap is working? Is it more like a spot or quarterly or annual contract?
Our scrap is, we are always trying to buy our scrap locally, and we do it normally. You know, in the case of the United States, the most of the scrap is located in the area of Chicago and Pennsylvania.
We are buying this scrap from these suppliers. We are the closest big user of stainless steel scrap there, so we have a very good situation. Most of the scrap in the United States, or 80% of the scrap that is generated in the United States, is less than eight hours per truck to the NAS factory. This is very positive.
In the case of Europe, we are probably sourcing most of the scrap that is generated in Spain and Portugal, and the rest is coming from the biggest scrap dealers located in Central Europe, especially in Rotterdam. You know, we have that material there. We have a diversified source of a number of suppliers.
We are comfortable the way it is, and we are comfortable trying to diversify our supplies and being flexible and trying to take advantage of this by negotiating with all these suppliers. We don't have annual contracts in fixed basis, but we have some frame agreements with them that we are reviewing every year and sometimes even every quarter. The prices is set up normally with market conditions, you know.
We cannot speak about the stainless steel scrap as a nickel product. This stainless steel scrap is a product itself. It depends on the situation. Of course, we calculate our advantages buying scrap related to the nickel content.
You know, this is market. It's market always. You know, it's demand and availability. There's nothing, no formulas or strict annual contracts. We are happy the way we are being flexible and to change from one supplier to the other. What is important is that the stainless steel scrap is not moving very much through the world. No, there's not.
There are just a few amount of of scrap, very few, that is exported from Europe to India or Korea sometimes, but not big enough. Also China hasn't entered in this market. Stainless steel scrap is still a very regional or even a local business.
We have no more questions on the phone lines.
Okay. This has been everything from our side. Thank you very much again for joining us to this presentation of our results. Thank you very much also to the speakers. Just remind you that the next Q1 results will be released on the seventh of May. For all of you that are here in the room, we will be more than happy to share a Spanish wine now. Thank you very much and have a good day.