Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Vasilios, your conference call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Erdemir conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the first quarter 2024 financial results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. Please note Ereğli Demir ve Çelik Fabrikaları T.A.Ş., Erdemir, may, when necessary, make written or verbal announcements about forward-looking information, expectations, estimates, targets, assessments, and opinions. Erdemir has made the necessary arrangements about the amount results of such information through its disclosure policy and has shared such policy with the public through the Erdemir website in accordance with the Capital Markets Board regulations.
As stated in related policy, information contained in forward-looking statements, whether verbal or written, should not include unrealistic assumptions or forecasts. It should be noted that actual results could materially differ from estimates taking into account the fact that they are not based on historical facts but are driven from expectations, beliefs, plans, targets, and other factors which are beyond the control of our company. As a result, forward-looking statements should not be fully trusted or taken as granted. Forward-looking statements should be considered valid only considering the conditions prevailing at the same time of the announcement. In cases where it is understood that forward-looking statements are no longer achievable, such matter will be announced to the public and the statements will be revised. However, the decision to make a revision is a result of a subjective evaluation.
Therefore, it should be noted that when a party is coming to a judgment based on estimates and forward-looking statements, our company may not have made a revision at that particular time. Our company makes no commitments to make regular revisions which would fully cover changes in every parameter. New factors may arise in the future we may not be possible to foresee at this moment in time. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. İdil Önay Ergin, Investor Relations Director. Ms. Ergin, you may now proceed.
Thank you very much, Vasilios. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our conference call and webcast of Erdemir for the first quarter of 2024. Today, our CFO, Mr. Serdar Başoğlu, and our Financial Control and Reporting Director, Mr. Ulaş Yirmibeş, are also joining the webcast. First of all, I will go through our master presentation, which you can find on our website, and you can also follow it through the webcast. Then, at the end of this presentation, there is going to be a Q&A session, as usual. Before starting the presentation, I will hand over to our CFO, Mr. Serdar Başoğlu. The line is yours.
Thank you, İdil. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter conference call, and thank you for joining us today. As we leave 2023 behind, which was a difficult year due to the earthquakes, we return to our historical averages, 95% crude steel capacity utilization ratio, 2 million tons of sales, and $124 EBITDA per ton in the first quarter. When looking at financial and operational results of our company, it's worth remembering that 2023 was an exception and makes evaluation of 2024 complicated due to the base effect. Although there was a decline in steel sales prices in the first and second quarter, we expect to see positive impact on gross profitability since the decrease in raw material prices was progressively higher. We reached an agreement on İsdemir insurance claim advance payment of $155 million in addition to the $100 advance payment received.
This amount was reflected as income in our first quarter financial statements and will be paid until the end of Q3. The total payment amount has not been clarified yet, but we plan to complete the negotiation process and collect the claim payment within 2024. When we look at the Turkish steel markets, the increase in flat imports continued. Based on the application made by our company, a dumping investigation has been opened against the heavy plate originating from South Korea at the beginning of April. In addition, the process regarding the dumping investigation against the HRC originating from China, India, Japan, and Russia, where our company and our subsidiary İsdemir are amongst the applicants, continues. It is expected to complete within the year. We expect that as a result of both investigations, final decisions will be made to protect the domestic producer and prevent dumping in Turkey.
China is still one of the most important players in the world steel industry. China's HRC capacity continues to increase. In the first four months of 2024, two new hot rolling mills with a total capacity of approximately 10 million tons per year were put into operation. Although Chinese steel demand from the manufacturing industry has shown halted signs so far, HRC production and inventories are also increasing with additional capacity. This situation supports the view that steel exports can remain strong. According to first quarter data, Turkey is the fourth country to which China exports the most in HRC. In 2024, we focus on cost-cutting, self-sufficient investments aimed at increasing our internal efficiency. We plan to commission the new blast furnace at İsdemir in 2024. We still aim to achieve 8.2 million tons sales in 2024. Thank you again for listening to me.
I will be with you at the end of the presentation. So now I would like to hand over the mic to İdil.
Thank you, Mr. Başoğlu. Our presentation consists of two sections, as you already know. The first one is the market overview and then the financial results. So let's start with the commodity prices. In page three, you will see the prices of steel-related commodities and HRC. Let's take a look at coking coal, iron ore, scrap, and HRC prices. Price level of coking coal was around $324 per ton at the beginning of the year. It reached its lowest level in April, and then it has gradually increased and reached $241 per ton in the spot market as of today. Demand from China and India, which was weak in March, led to a decrease in coking coal prices in the overseas markets. Due to the increasing Chinese steel prices and production in April, China's coal demand from overseas markets increased.
This situation enables the decline in coal prices to remain at the level of $225 per ton for Australia. Iron ore price was around $140 per ton at the beginning of the year, and it has decreased to $116 per ton today. Iron ore prices, which fell in March due to the weak demand in China, started to rise with the expected support from the central government. The start of blast furnaces production in China, which are under maintenance during the winter months, supports iron ore prices. Scrap price was around $413 per ton at the beginning of the year, and the current scrap price is $380 per ton. Although euro has lost value against U.S. dollars since the beginning of March, the increase in collection costs in Europe supports the scrap price. On the bottom right, we show HRC prices in Black Sea, China, and South Europe.
In the global HRC markets, the strong PMI data in China and the fact that traders selling without value-added tax are not active in offers to foreign markets have had a slightly positive impact on the price outlook. However, due to the weak demand during the Labor Day holiday last week, many producers turned to making connections by keeping price levels constant rather than increasing them. On page four, you will see the production, consumption, exports, and import figures of Turkish steel markets for the three months of 2024. While consumption increased by 9%, production increased by 25%. Exports of steel products increased by 46% in quantity in the first quarter of the year, reaching 3.2 million tons. Imports decreased by 3% to 4.1 million tons in the same period. The export-import coverage ratio increased to 75%.
In the first quarter figures of 2023, production and exports decreased due to the earthquake effect, while imports increased. With the return to normal production levels in 2024, naturally, production and exports increased, while imports decreased slightly. On page seven, you will see the operational indicators of our company. The results achieved in the first quarter for sales and production are within our historical averages. We aim to achieve around 8.2 million tons sales in 2024. We are back to the level of 95% in crude steel capacity utilization ratio after the earthquake. As you already know, this ratio is far better than the world's average.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. The conference will begin shortly.
Sorry for the disconnection. Let's take a look at the segmental breakdown of domestic sales and export volume in page eight. As you can see from the pie charts, there has been a change between sectors due to the effect of market and demand conditions when we compare to last year's breakdown. There has been a transition from the distribution chains and general manufacturing to pipeline profile and auto industry. We see a similar situation in the long products. However, the fact that İsdemir production stopped for about three months, which was affected by the earthquake in the first quarter of last year, is also effective in these numbers. As I mentioned in the previous slide, the unusual decline in exports is mainly caused by the earthquake, as seen in the last year's first quarter exports. As of first quarter 2024, we are back to 15% export level.
On page nine, you can find the breakdown of revenue for domestic and export sales. 84% of the revenue comes from domestic sales in line with the domestic volume. The first quarter sales price average for flat and long steel increased compared to the previous quarter. We generated $124 EBITDA per ton in the first quarter. In 2024, we expect to see about $100 per ton. Despite import pressure in the domestic markets, we achieved to generate $240 million EBITDA and $181 million net profit in the first quarter. On page 10, you can see how we reached net profit from EBITDA. One of the largest items was depreciation, which was $63 million in three months. The other major item in this chart was financial expenses. Net interest expense was $53 million in three months. The majority of this interest expense arises from financing ongoing investments.
Tax expense was $70 million, and after other expenses, net profit was $181 million. The additional insurance income accruals of $105 million recorded as income in the first quarter, and this number is not included in EBITDA calculation since it is one of adjustments. While calculating the net profit, $105 million of the $108 million consolidation classification arises from additional insurance income accruals. In the graph below, you can see EBITDA to change in cash bridge. Working capital increased due to the inventories. Also, we spend around $214 million sorry, to capital expenditures in three months. This amount also includes advances paid for capital expenditures as well. And that you see the difference between the CapEx page in page 13 and this one. On page 11, you will see the historical trend of financial borrowings and net debt.
When we look at the first quarter of 2024, our net working capital remained almost stable compared to the end of last year. There was a slight increase in inventories. Our net position was $1.7 billion at the end of the year due to the sorry, at the end of the first quarter. Due to the ongoing capital expenditure, the net debt EBITDA ratio was 2x. We aim to keep our net debt EBITDA ratio at the similar level of 2x for the rest of the year. Slide 12 represents our cost of sales breakdown. The use of imported semi-finished products, which is imported slab, increased due to the halt of production at İsdemir for 3 months due to the earthquake in 2023.
As our own slab production returned to normal level in the first quarter of 2024, the share of iron ore and pellets in our cost structure increased. Therefore, imported semi-finished products, which are included in other items, decreased. Page 13 represents the historical CapEx spending. The total capital expenditure spending is $167 million in three months. When we add the advance payments of $47 million to this figure, we reach the investment expenditure of $214 million. The new first blast furnace in İsdemir will be commissioned in the second half of this year. We expect that CapEx will reach up to $1 billion again in 2024 with maintenance and other ongoing investments. As we announced in January, we are proud to announce our net zero roadmap in 2024.
We aim to reduce carbon emissions per ton by 25% by 2030, 40% by 2040, and achieve net zero emissions by 2050 compared to the base year of 2022. We plan to spend $3.2 billion for transformational investment of Erdemir and İsdemir by the end of 2030. 78% of $3.2 billion investment will be sourced externally utilizing easily accessible financial resources for the green transformation. Erdemir and İsdemir crude steel capacity will reach 30 million tons by 2030. Now, we may continue with the Q&A session. We will be delighted to answer your questions with Mr. Serdar Başoğlu. Thank you for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Jason Fairclough with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, İdil, and Mr. Başoğlu. Thanks for taking my question. I've got two, if that's okay. First, I was wondering, could you give some color on the potential timing of the liquidation of the other current assets? And specifically, I'm thinking here about the VAT receivables and also the accrued insurance proceeds. Second question is just, is there any color around the difference between production and sales in Q1? Is this just normal quarterly variation, or is there something else going on here? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jason, for your questions. So the first one, the liquidation of other current assets. So actually, we would like to share good news. As of today, we collected all of the Value-Added Tax receivables of TRY 14 billion. In our first quarter results, you've seen approximately TRY 4 billion Value-Added Tax receivables were collected in our reports. But in the second quarter, we collected all of the Value-Added Tax receivables. So that was the first one. And the second one, actually, there was a kind of storm, a very bad storm, in our Ereğli plants. So because of that, we couldn't ship some of our sales. And that's the main reason you see in the first quarter a slight decrease in our sales amounts.
Did the management complete it with the answer?
Oh, yes. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question comes from the line of Andrew Jones with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I have a few questions. First of all, I'm curious about the impact of these high Chinese export levels on your business. And I noticed that in the first quarter, the import levels in Turkey didn't really increase year-over-year. I'm wondering if you're expecting to see more pressure there from higher exports coming out of China. That's the first question. And then just on the second quarter bridge, I guess spreads are probably under pressure. But given that kind of delay to some of the shipments, should we see a material step up in shipments quarter-over-quarter? And could you give us any color around that and also about moving parts of the margin?
A little bit.
Sorry?
Hi, İdil. Thank you for the questions. So the first one, yes, you are right. Actually, the imports level decreased just 3%. But when you look at the flat steel imports, actually, it increased. So that's why we have already two ongoing anti-dumping investigations in Turkey against HRC and heavy plate imports. So for HRC anti-dumping investigation, we expect to see results until the end of this year. And we believe that it's going to support the domestic producers. So we are expecting some kind of positives for the domestic results for the domestic producers in Turkey. But yes, of course, the import pressure continues, especially in flat steel from China specifically. And your second question was the sales quantity. So for the second quarter I mean, for the whole year, we expect to see around 8.2 million tons sales.
And for the second quarter, most probably, we're going to have between 2 million-2.1 million tons sales. So if we achieve every quarter around 2 or 2.1 million tons, we're going to reach our expectation of 8.2 million tons.
Okay. That's clear. And is it fair to say that spreads should be coming under pressure in the second quarter given that I mean, obviously, pricing has come down, but you get probably some lagged impact from some cost relief on the raw materials? Is it your expectation that spreads decline in Türkiye?
Well, the steel prices decreased, but also raw materials decreased. Proportionally, actually, raw materials decreased more than sales prices. That's why we do not expect gross profitability to decrease in the second quarter. We are expecting some kind of stable position in the second quarter.
That's very clear. Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Başoğlu and Ms. Erg in for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you again for listening to us, for joining our conference call. We wish you to see the second quarter call. Have a nice day.
Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good evening.