Hello, and welcome to the Vallourec First Quarter 2023 Results. My name is George. I'll be coordinator for today's event. Please note this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be in listen-only mode. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register a question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. The conference will be chaired by Mr. Philippe Guillemot, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Sascha Bibert, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Connor Lynagh, Vice President of Investor Relations at Vallourec. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for Vallourec's First Quarter 2023 Results Presentation. I'm Connor Lynagh, Vice President of Investor Relations at Vallourec. I'm joined today by Vallourec's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Philippe Guillemot, and Vallourec's Chief Financial Officer, Sascha Bibert. Before we begin our presentation, I would like to note that this conference call will be recorded and a replay will be available following the call. You can find the audio webcast on our investor relations website. The presentation slides referred to during this call are available for download there as well. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements. Future results may differ materially from statements or projections made on today's call. The forward-looking statements and risk factors that could affect those statements are referenced at the beginning of our slide presentation.
These are also included in our Universal Registration Document filed with the French financial markets regulator, the AMF. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Philippe Guillemot.
Thank you, Connor. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for this update on Vallourec's first quarter 2023 results. Before proceeding, let me draw your attention to slide two, where you can consult our safe harbor statement. Today's agenda is on slide three. I will start by giving you an overview of the highlights of the first quarter, followed by an update on the execution of our New Vallourec plan and the work on market environment. Sascha will take you through our Q1 numbers, I will wrap up with the outlook for the second quarter and full year 2023. Let's look at the highlights of the first quarter on slide five. Our first quarter of 2023 EBITDA was EUR 320 million, which reflects a EUR 275 million year-over-year increase.
Our Tubes EBITDA contribution was EUR 279 million, a strong increase of EUR 223 million year-over-year. This was supported by 28% Average Selling Price increase comparing to Q1 2022. Mine & Forest EBITDA was EUR 48 million, up EUR 46 million year-over-year. This increase was largely driven by a 1.4 million ton year-over-year volume recovery. free cash flow generation in the first quarter was once again strong at EUR 147 million. I would note we have added supplemental cash flow disclosures that Sascha will detail later. Our adjusted free cash flow, one of these measures, was also strong at EUR 194 million. In the first quarter, we reduced Net Debt by EUR 130 million, leaving us with Net Debt of EUR 1 billion at the end of March.
This robust Q1 result gives us confidence that we will be able to deliver on our previously provided outlook for 2023. Recall that this included a year-over-year increase in EBITDA, positive free cash flow generation, and further Net Debt reduction. Overall, the market environment for our products remains strong. We saw solid Q1 order intake driven by Middle East National Oil Companies and hemisphere customers. The aggregate price trend on Tubes orders remains favorable as international pricing has continued to move higher, offsetting a moderate sequential decline in U.S. pricing. The New Vallourec plan is fully on track. To generate EUR 230 million of annualized EBITDA uplift with the full effect starting in Q2 2024.
As we have discussed, the plan encompasses a major CapEx program in Brazil to enhance our product offering and to enable the transfer of oil and gas volumes from Germany, which is now underway. Turning to our Mine & Forest business. On May 5th, 2023, we obtained the necessary permissions from the state mining and environmental authorities for the full release of the Cachoeirinha waste pile at our Pau Branco iron ore mine. We expect the mine to return to full production in the second quarter. Note that April volume sold was already at 0.6 million tons. Turning to an update on our ESG journey, I would like to mention that shortly following our last earnings communication, Vallourec was recognized by Standard and Poor's Global for reducing its leverage and cost.
Our long-term issuer rating was upgraded in March 2023 to BB- from B+ with a positive outlook. Let's turn to slide six. ESG remains one of our key focuses, and Vallourec is strongly positioned in this regard. We received incremental upgrades in our CDP Water and Forest rating in 2022, and were recognized in the Platinum class of EcoVadis sustainability ratings. Additionally, as detailed in our Universal Registration Document, we have already surpassed our 2025 targets for Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. We have further room for improvement as our ongoing production transfer from Germany to Brazil will further reduce our carbon intensity in addition to enhancing our profitability. Let's turn to slide eight to review our New Vallourec plan. As a reminder, the New Vallourec plan was announced in May 2022. Our objectives are to cycle-proof our business and drive best-in-class profitability.
We plan to drive a EUR 230 million run rate EBITDA improvement and a EUR 20 million CapEx reduction with a full impact starting in Q2 2024. For reference, our target 2024 industrial footprint is shown at the left. I want to highlight the key first actions we have taken to achieve this goal. This is shown on slide nine. As you will recall, the three key levers in our plan are emphasizing value over volume, reshaping our industrial footprint, and reducing overheads. In emphasizing value over volume, we structurally strengthen our pricing policies and reinforce our focus on contract terms and conditions. Paired with a favorable market environment, this has led to significant quarter after quarter increase in our tubes Average Selling Price. We are reshaping our industrial footprint by shutting down loss-making assets in Europe and transferring oil and gas production capabilities to Brazil.
In 2022, we finalized the necessary social agreements in Europe, launched a real estate sales process, and initiated a EUR 120 million investment program in Brazil. We are reducing overhead. We are progressing a EUR 100 million overhead cost reduction program, and have simplified and unified our research and development organization. This is not purely a cost-cutting exercise. We have structurally improved the management routines in our organization to enable greater transparency and control of our operations. We have also refreshed our executive committee with a diverse set of managers and substantially improved incentive alignment across the organization. Slide 10 provides some color on a few of the near-term items we are executing in the new Vallourec plan. In Brazil, we recently began the primary phase of our capability enhancements program.
While this is not an outright capacity growth program, it will expand the market addressable by our South America Tubes operations. We have a detailed plan in place to ensure on-time project execution and to mitigate the impact of upcoming capacity stoppages. Finally, we are progressing well in the product qualification process with our key customers. This is a key step in the movement of our production from Germany to Brazil. In Germany, our activity rundown remains on schedule, and we have the necessary order backlog for our 2023 production plan in hand. The sales processes for Mülheim and Düsseldorf-Rath are both ongoing. Though we do not expect closing of the Mülheim sale in the near term. Now, let's discuss the commercial environment. On slide 12, we focus on the U.S. OCTG market, which is the largest market in our North America operations.
Rig count, a proxy for our demand, has been range bound to start the year with a slight decrease observed from the late 2022 peak. Meanwhile, OCTG prices in the U.S. have begun to moderate versus the high levels they attained in late 2022. We remain focused on value over volume. Thus have preferred to slow our production cadence rather than cede large amounts of pricing. While we will need to adjust our pricing somewhat to meet the market, we are optimistic that the high level of imports observed in late 2022 and early 2023 should moderate as we move through the year. On the demand front, we believe current oil prices still allow our customers to generate solid returns in their drilling programs and have seen limited signs of a slowdown from our core customer base.
Putting these factors together, we believe our U.S. margin will remain strong in 2023. On slide 13, we can see that the international OCTG market is evolving positively. I would note that here we refer to the international market similarly to other global oil field service and equipment players. That is to say, this is the world outside of North America. Here, onshore and offshore drilling activity are on the rise. The Middle East has been a major driver of this, and our order intake from the key National Oil Companies in the Middle East was very strong in the first quarter. However, this is not an isolated trend as we see demand increasing in most regions. As a result, pricing continues to increase across all major markets. Moving to slide 14.
Looking at our Tubes business as a whole, Q1 2023 continued the positive trend observed over the past several quarters. We earned nearly EUR 650 of EBITDA per ton sold, a substantial year-over-year improvement. This reflects the strong market environment and the success of the new pricing policies we implemented last year. As I previously mentioned, aggregate customer demand remains strong. While international pricing has yet to converge with pricing in North America, our orders generally showed a positive price trend in the first quarter. 2023 is set to be a transformational year for our Tubes business. As mentioned, we recently initiated the primary phase of our capability enhancement program in Brazil. While we have a plan in place to mitigate the disruptions affiliated with this program, there will likely be some modest inefficiencies in the near term in Brazil.
This should abate in 2024, at which point we will no longer be burdened by our production losses in Germany. Turning to our Mine & Forest segment on slide 15. Iron ore production was 1.5 million tons in the first quarter, in line with the expectations we communicated in March. The year-over-year increase reflects the return to partial production levels after the Cachoeirinha waste pile slippage that occurred in early 2022. On May 5th, we obtained the necessary permissions from the state mining and environmental authorities for the full release of the Cachoeirinha waste pile. The mine will return to full production in the second quarter. I will hand the call over to Sascha, who will comment on our Q1 2023 results.
Thank you, Philippe, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating. We reported strong Q1 numbers today, which I will comment on in a second. First, however, I start with page 17 and our revised free cash flow reporting. In our discussions with the market, we realized that investors and analysts found it difficult to work with our way of defining cash flow. Also in sell side models, we observed different ways of modeling the progression of debt based upon our communication. As a consequence, we revised our disclosure in order to better separate restructuring and other non-recurring elements from the ongoing business, which is key to understand the business during the New Vallourec transformation phase. Second, create a cash metric that is generally closer to the change in net debt. Finally, we also did some cleanups, especially in the other categories, to have more meaningful line items.
On this slide, I'm using the Q1 2022 figures to explain the changes. Specifically, we have moved the former other including restructuring charges of -EUR 19 million to now below adjusted free cash flow, therefore part of Total Cash Generation. Next to moving the entire line, we took three smaller items out of this bucket and moved them to non-cash items in EBITDA or financial cash out. We have split the former asset disposals and other line of EUR 25 million into a cash effective part and a non-cash effective part. The latter now being part of non-cash adjustments to Net Debt. Other cash items, which are part of the -EUR 10 million, include dividends paid, changes in letter of credit, and variation of financial leasing debt. Non-cash adjustments to Net Debt totaling -EUR 50 million include accrued interest and FX.
As a consequence, we now have three cash related metrics which are Adjusted Operating Cash Flow, adjusted free cash flow, and Total Cash Generation. The change in Net Debt is obviously not affected. To ease the transition and to ensure that there is no change in the explicit or implied guidance, we will continue to report both the old and the new definition of free cash flow throughout the entirety of 2023. As Philippe will emphasize in the outlook slide, we continue to strive for a positive free cash flow in 2023 according to the old definition, or a positive Total Cash Generation, excluding any potential benefit from asset sales in the new definition. Moving to page 18 for the key figures. All KPIs are pointing into the right direction, acknowledging that Q1 2022 generally provided for a low comparison base.
Next to a strong EBITDA in the first quarter 2023 with an EBITDA margin of around 24%, I would like to point out that we had another quarter of positive cash generation leading to a further reduction in Net Debt. Let's look at the numbers in more detail, starting with Tubes on page 19. Volumes and especially revenues are up strong year-over-year, leading to an increase in the Average Selling Price of 28% now at EUR 2,919 per ton. Please note that the Average Selling Price is also up quarter-over-quarter. On page 20, you see that the Tubes profitability, either measured as EBITDA margin or EBITDA per ton, is up strongly, both year-over-year as well as sequentially. This profitability is currently dominated by the production in the U.S..
We expect the geographic mix to become more balanced over the year as the profitability of the South American production improves. On page 21, we display the performance of our Mine & Forest business. Production revenues and EBITDA are all up year-over-year as in Q1 2022, we had the landslides. The EBITDA margin improved to 52%, also up sequentially as the average iron price improved to $125 per ton. Following the release of the main waste pile, we can now go back to the full production. When it comes to earnings, we have to note that the iron ore price has come down somewhat in recent weeks. On page 22, I'm taking the group view again. Revenues are predominantly driven by price increases, which by far also overcompensate cost increases, thereby leading to a substantial increase in EBITDA.
The EUR -50 million other in the EBITDA bridge contains multiple items, including the absence of positive items from last year and effects related to the VAD ramp down. SG&A remained on a low level as percent of sales and declined on an absolute basis, both year-over-year as well as sequentially. When moving from EBITDA to net to a positive net income of EUR 157 million, I note that D&A was steady at EUR 63 million. In contrast to Q4, in this quarter, we did not book any impairments. Financial expenses were EUR 46 million, of which net interest expense EUR 26 million and the remaining EUR 20 million largely FX losses. The tax expense was EUR 53 million, equivalent to a tax rate of 25%, predominantly driven by the U.S.. Moving to cash flow on page 23 and now applying our new cash definition.
Adjusted Operating Cash Flow was EUR 299 million, substantially up year-over-year. Also sequentially, driven by higher cash EBITDA, offset by the net interest and tax payments. Please keep in mind that the interest payments are generally higher in the second and fourth quarter of the year, and that tax payments will also increase throughout the year as the U.S. operation has now consumed all of its historic operating losses. adjusted free cash flow amounted to EUR 194 million. In contrast to Q4, where we saw a substantial release of working capital, in Q1, working capital increased slightly, mainly driven by inventories in South America, partially offset by higher payables.
Total Cash Generation was EUR 151 million, reduced by EUR 47 million restructuring and non-recurring items payments, of which the majority relates to Vallourec Deutschland. This category is also expected to increase during the year, especially in the fourth quarter, in line with the outlook statement for a total restructuring cash out of less than EUR 350 million. Using our old metric, the free cash flow would have been EUR 147 million, i.e., very close to Total Cash Generation of EUR 151 million, as there were no significant disposals. Net Debt now stands at EUR 1 billion. The EUR 21 million non-cash adjustments primarily relates to the accrual of interest, which precedes the actual payment of interest in the next quarter. I hand back to Philippe for the outlook and key takeaways.
Thank you, Sascha. Let's look at slide 25 to discuss our outlook for both the second quarter and the full year 2023. For the second quarter of the year, based on our assumptions and current market conditions, we expect EBITDA to be similar to Q1 2023. Underlying this, we expect robust revenues in Tubes as international price improvement offset a moderate sequential decline in the U.S. In our Mine & Forest business, we expect the Pau Branco iron ore mine to return to full production in Q2 2023. Based on current market prices, this sequential volume increase will be offset by lower prices. The second quarter, we expect our Total Cash Generation to be around breakeven. This is largely due to an assumed temporary and higher increase of Working Capital as a result of the CapEx plan execution in Brazil.
Turning to the full year, we reiterate our full year outlook for 2023. Specifically, we expect EBITDA to improve compared to 2022, Net Debt to decline compared to 2022, and free cash flow and Total Cash Generation to be positive, excluding any potential benefit from asset sales. Within the cash flow outlook, we expect higher year-over-year tax payments, approximately EUR 220 million of gross capital expenditure and restructuring and non-recurring items to require moderately below EUR 250 million of cash outflows. Returning to our EBITDA outlook, we expect our 2023 EBITDA to be somewhat weighted towards the first half of the year. In the second half of 2023, we will likely see some degradation from our planned volume rundown in Germany and sequential declines in U.S. pricing.
That said, I would emphasize that we continue to expect the full effect of the New Vallourec plan starting in Q2 2024, with a meaningful portion of the EUR 230 million annualized EBITDA benefits to be realized in 2024. As a reminder, the largest portion of this benefit will come from the closure of our German operations, which we expect will generate losses of more than EUR 100 million in 2023. A few words to conclude on slide 26. We delivered strong earnings and Total Cash Generation in the first quarter due to favorable market conditions, our value over volume strategy, and strong execution. Our New Vallourec plan remains on track to generate EUR 230 million of recurring EBITDA uplift with full effect starting Q2 2024.
The execution of our major Brazil CapEx program is underway, with a shift of production volumes from Germany to be completed by the end of 2023. Our tubes earnings power remains strong, and our iron ore mine is set to return to full production in the second quarter. We remain committed to cycle-proofing our business and balance sheet. Thank you for your attention. Sascha and I are now ready to take your questions.
Thank you very much, Monsieur Guillemot. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask an audio question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Once again, please press star one if you wish to ask a question. Our first question is coming from Monsieur Guillaume Delaby from Société Générale . Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, good morning. Congrats for the results and for the exhaustive presentation. Two questions, if I may. Thank you for providing color on Q2. Obviously I'm going to try to get some color on Q3. Basically, if I understand correctly, in Q3, the decline in U.S. pricing will be more important than the improvement in pricing in international market. My question, first question is to what extent, I would say, this negative delta could already start to be, let's say, somewhat offset by the implement of your plan? This is my first question. My second question, you expect restructuring costs to be circa EUR 350 million in 2023. If I understand correctly, it was only EUR 47 million in Q1. Could we have maybe an indicative timing about those restructuring costs over the next three quarters?
Thank you.
Thank you for your two questions. First, I will answer the first, and I will hand over to Sascha for the second. Yeah, price decrease in the U.S. will not be fully offset by price increase out of the U.S. Nevertheless, let's put things in perspective. Even though there will be a sequential decline of prices expected in Q2 in 2024, we are still at price levels which are fairly good because we are talking about a sequential decline compared to historically high price level in the U.S. That's as far as the plan is concerned. We will be impacted in H2 by our German operation losses. As you understand, we are in a rundown of volumes. Fixed costs at what they are.
As a consequence, we expect out of the more than EUR 100 million losses in Germany to obviously have most of them in H2, which obviously will impact our numbers. The good news is that this will disappear in 2024, so it's a temporary impact. Now I hand over to Sascha to give you some color on our restructuring cash out for the year.
I will do so, Philippe. Just one more comment on the first question. I think, Guillaume, you also asked whether the implementation of the New Vallourec plan could already offset some of the items at play in the second half. I'm just reminding something that Philippe has said in his speech, i.e., that the benefits from the New Vallourec plan are really expected to kick in starting with Q2 2024. Prior to that, honestly, there isn't that much since the losses in Germany will actually increase in the second half of 2023, as Philippe just explained. Now, coming to the restructuring cash out, which you have noted rightfully to be guided as below EUR 350 million for the full year. We had indeed EUR 47 million in Q1.
Guillaume, best expectations as of today would be that the first three quarters would be roughly similar, and then the majority of the restructuring cash out to actually occur in the fourth quarter. Over.
Thank you. Merci, Philippe. vielen dank, Sascha. I turn it over.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir.
We'll now go to Jean-Luc Romain calling from CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. You mentioned the moderate decline in prices in the U.S. in the coming quarters. Should we expect the rhythm of the decline to be similar to what happened between Q1 and Q4 2022? Or do you expect an acceleration of this decline?
For Q2, we know already what it is. We're already halfway into the quarter, it's definitely a moderate sequential decline, very moderate. As far as what's coming next, I just keep repeating what I said earlier. Yes, there will be a higher decline in Q3 versus Q2 than we will see in Q2 versus Q1. Again, we are still at fairly high prices in the U.S.
Jean-Luc, an additional way of putting some color into it is, could be that according to our view, any possible declines to come are likely to be of a lower magnitude versus the increases we have seen in 2022.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Romain. Our next question is coming from Kevin Roger of Kepler. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Frankly, thanks a lot for the level of information that you provide in the slides. This is very much appreciated. Maybe one question, and I don't know if you will be ready to share some colors with us, but there has been a number of question and quite a bit of stress on the market recently with the pricing trend in the U.S., basically not focusing at all on the current trend that you see in the Middle East. Would it be possible for you to provide a kind of EBITDA per ton metrics between U.S. versus Middle East and where do you stand currently? Would you say that U.S. is currently two times above Middle East?
Any kind of color that you can provide maybe to try to estimate the potential impact and the of the U.S. and the offset coming from the Middle East? That would be the first question, please. The second question, Philippe, you mentioned in the comments that the disposal of Mülheim is not expected in the short term. Maybe quite a change of tone regarding what we were expecting recently. Can we assume basically that the discussion have ended, or what's the situation on that one? The third one may be a longer term one, if I may. We have now since few months the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S..
Have you seen any first commercial impact in terms of discussion for tubes related to carbon capture activities, please?
Yeah. Obviously, I won't disclose the EBITDA per ton in the U.S. versus the rest of the world. I can send you back to this presentation where we show that there is slowly but surely a convergence of prices between U.S. and the rest of the world, which obviously is a good proxy on what could happen on the EBITDA per ton. Anyway, the information we are disclosing are public information, so market information, and we are right now over-performing this public information. Mülheim, you know, when we sell a piece of land wherever in the world, I think we have to ensure that the project is fully supported by all the stakeholders.
Even though there is real and strong appetite for our property in Mülheim, we have not yet found a project which tick all these boxes. That's the reason why it takes longer than expected, and that's why we don't expect to close this transaction in the near term. We are obviously still progressing on the sale of the Mülheim Rath property, which is a much bigger property, much more valuable property. Here, same thing, obviously, we pay careful attention to come with a project which will, yeah, be supported by all stakeholders, starting with the city. As far as IR is concerned, definitely good news.
I think on CCUS we have seen many projects being severely accelerated, and we have been able to secure others for Carbon Capture in the U.S., thanks to these IR mechanisms. I have to confess that this IR program translates very quickly into into project, as they seem to be a very efficient, the funding available to the investors.
Okay. Thanks for the color. Have a good day.
Thank you, Monsieur Roger. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you have any questions, please do press star one at this time. Next question is coming from James Winchester calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Just two for me, please. The first one, I kind of wanted to follow up on the question you had regarding the second half, because in your full year outlook, you used the term somewhat with respect to EBITDA being first half weighted. If you kind of look at full year consensus numbers around EUR 1 billion, and use EUR 640 million for the first half, it implies a 40% drop in the second half. Is that what you kind of had in mind for somewhat or is that a bit too aggressive? Number two, could you just provide any sort of commentary with respect to the timing of the refinancing of your 2026 bonds? Thank you.
Well, first, yeah. As you see, we have a very strong start of the fiscal year 2023 with our Q1 numbers. As I indicated, we expect similar numbers as far as EBITDA is concerned in Q2. Yeah, if you take EUR 1 billion as a target for the year, you end up with a decline you just expected. We will see, EUR 1 billion is really the floor of our expectation for the year. As far as timing of our refinancing is concerned, that's something, as I already said in the past, I will start looking at next year. As I have said many times, first we need to demonstrate our ability to deleverage the balance sheet as fast as possible. In due time, obviously we will contemplate and give, d epending on market condition, because obviously we need to take this into account, we will refinance our balance sheet.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Winchester. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, for any questions, do pre-press star one at this time. As we do not have any questions at this time. Oh, just one second, please. Just give everybody more of a chance to signal.
No more question? Okay. Thank you very much. No, there is one? We can close the call. Thank you.
No. I'd like to turn the call back over to you. I was just gonna give everybody more of a chance to signal, but I think you wish to close. Let me turn the conference back over to Monsieur Guillemot for any additional closing remarks. Sorry for the interruption, sir. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you again for joining us for today's call. I just leave you with the following thoughts. Well, the market for our products and the value-added product is strong, and our order intake continues to support this. We are well on our way to realizing the substantial benefits of the New Vallourec plan, which will be a substantial earnings tailwind in 2024. Finally, we remain focused on deleveraging our balance sheet, cycle-proofing our business, and closing the performance gap with our peers. Thank you again. Operator, you may close the call.