Be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jason Hershiser, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Shannon. I would like to welcome everyone to our first quarter 2026 earnings call. On the call today, we have our Chief Executive Officer, Ingrid Joerg, and our Chief Financial Officer, Jack Guo. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. A copy of the slide presentation for today's call is available on our website at constellium.com, and today's call is being recorded. Before we begin, I'd like to encourage everyone to visit the company's website and take a look at our recent filings. Today's call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include statements regarding the company's anticipated financial and operating performance, future events and expectations, and may involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties.
For a summary of specific risk factors that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the factors presented under the heading Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K. All information in this presentation is as of the date of the presentation. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. In addition, today's presentation includes information regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures attached in today's slide presentation, which supplement our GAAP disclosures. With that, I would now like to hand the call over to Ingrid.
Thanks, Jason. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Constellium. Before we start, I wanted to say we are very pleased with our first quarter performance, including record Adjusted EBITDA. We are also raising our outlook for the full year and expect 2026 to be a record year for the company, both in terms of Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Let's begin on slide 5 and discuss the highlights from our first quarter performance. I would like to start with safety, our number 1 priority. We delivered strong safety performance in the first quarter with a recordable case rate of 1.16 per million hours worked versus 1.91 in 2025. Despite this strong achievement, our safety journey is never complete.
We remain focused on this critical priority every day, including achieving our safety target to reduce our annual recordable case rate to 1.5 per million hours worked. Turning to our financial results, shipments were 370,000 tons in the first quarter, as higher shipments in A&T were offset by lower shipments in P&ARP and AS&I. Revenue of $2.5 billion increased 24% compared to the first quarter of 2025 due to the higher revenue per ton, including higher metal prices. Remember, while our revenues are affected by changes in metal prices, we operate the pass-through business model, which minimizes our exposure to metal price risk. Our net income was $196 million in the quarter, compared to net income of $38 million in the first quarter last year.
The main drivers of the increase were higher gross profit and favorable changes in other gains and losses in the quarter versus last year. Compared to the first quarter last year, Adjusted EBITDA increased 93% to $359 million in the first quarter this year, though this includes a positive non-cash impact from metal price lag of $97 million. If we exclude the impact of metal price lag, which as you know, is the way we view the real economic performance of our business, we achieved an Adjusted EBITDA of $262 million in the quarter. This represents an all-time record for the company and is up 78% versus the $147 million in the first quarter last year.
Adjusted EBITDA was up in each of our operating segments in the quarter versus last year, including a new quarterly record for P&ARP and a new first quarter record for A&T. Our free cash flow was EUR 5 million in the quarter, and during the quarter, we returned EUR 28 million to shareholders through the repurchase of 1.2 million shares. In March, we announced that our board approved a new EUR 300 million share repurchase program that expires in December 2028 and that will replace our existing program following our annual shareholders meeting this May. We delivered strong results this quarter, which were ahead of our own expectations despite macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties.
During the quarter, we benefited from current market dynamics, including supply shortages of automotive raw products in North America, improved aerospace and TID environments, and highly favorable scrap and metal dynamics in North America. Before turning the call over to Jack, I wanted to make a few comments regarding the expected impact from the conflict in the Middle East. In terms of metal supply, we do source some metal from the Middle East today, both slabs and billets, but they represent a small percentage of our overall needs. As such, we believe the impact on metal supply for us is limited at this stage. We should be able to resource through a combination of internal and external metal flows. On energy, most of our energy costs are locked in for 2026.
For the small portion which we chose to leave open, the impact of higher energy costs should be modest. In other cost categories, we are beginning to see some inflationary pressures in freight, lubricants, and coatings, but we expect the net impact from this to be manageable. We currently do not expect any impacts on our supply chain from lack of freight capacity. In terms of other indirect impacts from the Middle East conflict, we have not seen much end market disruption at this stage, so we will continue to monitor it closely. To wrap up on this topic, the overall impact from the conflict in the Middle East appears digestible at this point. The longer-term impacts remain uncertain and difficult to predict, but we are confident in our ability to manage our business in any environment.
With that, I will now hand the call over to Jack for further details on our financial performance.
Thank you, Ingrid, and thank you everyone for joining the call today. Please turn now to slide 7. Let's focus our A&T segment performance. Adjusted EBITDA of $102 million increased 24% compared to the first quarter last year and represents a new first quarter record for A&T. Volume was a tailwind of $32 million due to higher shipments in both aerospace and TID. Aerospace shipments started the year strong and were up 13% in the quarter versus last year. TID shipments were up 18% versus last year as we continue to see increased demand from onshoring in the U.S. TID also benefited from automotive coil shipments from Ravenswood due to the current supply disruption in automotive raw products in North America.
Price and mix was a headwind of EUR 2 million due to unfavorable mix in the quarter, mostly offset by improved contractual and spot pricing in aerospace and TID. Costs were a headwind of EUR 16 million, primarily as a result of higher operating costs given higher activity levels. FX and other was a tailwind of EUR 6 million in the quarter due to the weaker U.S. dollar. Turn to slide 8, and let's focus on our parts segment performance. Adjusted EBITDA of $ 151 million increased 152% compared to the 1st quarter last year and is a new quarterly record for P&ARP. Volume was a headwind of EUR 6 million in the quarter as higher automotive shipments were more than offset by lower packaging shipments.
Packaging shipments decreased 6% in the quarter versus last year, though underlying packaging demand remained healthy in both North America and Europe. Automotive shipments increased 12% in the quarter as we benefited from the current supply shortages in North America of aluminum automotive body sheet. Price and mix was a tailwind of $26 million as a result of improved pricing and favorable mix in the quarter. Costs were a tailwind of $ 65 million, primarily as a result of favorable metal costs given higher throughput and improved productivity in our recycling and casting operations, continued improvement in scrap spreads, and significantly higher metal pricing environment in North America. FX and other was a tailwind of $6 million in the quarter. Turn to slide 9, and let's focus on the AS&I segment.
Adjusted EBITDA of $24 million increased 50% compared to the first quarter last year. Volume was a $4 million headwind as a result of lower shipments in automotive and industry extruded products. Automotive shipments were down 3% in the quarter, mainly due to weakness in Europe. Even though the automotive markets in North America are relatively stable, our Automotive Structures business was negatively affected by the current supply shortages of aluminum automotive body sheet and its impact on pro-production of certain platforms in the region. Industry shipments were down 5% in the quarter versus last year, though industrial markets in Europe have stabilized at these low levels. Price and mix was a $2 billion headwind in the quarter. Costs were a tailwind of $ 11 million, primarily due to lower operating costs.
FX and other was a tailwind of $3 million in the quarter. It is not on a slide here. Our holdings and corporate expense was $15 million in the quarter. Holdings and corporate expense was up $4 million from last year due to higher labor costs and unfavorable foreign exchange translation. As we said last quarter, we expect holdings and corporate expense to run at approximately $50 million in 2026. It is also not on the slide here. I wanted to summarize the current cost environment we're facing. As you know, we operate a pass-through business model. We're not materially exposed to changes in the market price of primary aluminum, our largest cost input. On other metal costs, which includes our recycling profits, we have seen unprecedented levels of volatility over the last 18 months.
Following the U.S. tariff announcements in 2025, market aluminum prices in the U.S., which includes the LME aluminum price plus the Midwest Premium, have risen sharply to historical levels. The current conflict in the Middle East has put additional upward pressure on global market aluminum prices. Spot scrap spreads for aluminum, mainly Used Beverage Cans or UBCs, have also improved to historically wide levels in the spot market today. Both of these dynamics represent a sharp contrast from the lower metal price environment and historically tight scrap spread levels we experienced in the second half of 2024 and through the first half of 2025, during which period we were negatively impacted. As discussed last quarter, we benefited from the improvement in scrap and metal pricing environment in the fourth quarter last year, and we saw more benefits in the first quarter this year.
Looking ahead, most of our scrap needs in the second quarter are locked in at favorable levels, and our team is working tirelessly to secure additional scrap supply for the second half in an environment that remains volatile. It is important to bear in mind that recycling is core to what we do, as it takes significant amount of investment and know-how, and we are focused on making the best out of the current favorable conditions and delivering a strong return on our recycling investments for our shareholders. Moving on from metal costs. Inflationary pressures continue today across multiple operating cost categories, including labor, energy, maintenance, and supplies, albeit at more normal levels.
As Ingrid mentioned previously, we're beginning to see some elevated inflationary pressures in other categories such as freight, lubricants, and coatings as a result of the conflict in the Middle East, though we expect the net impact from this to be digestible at this point. Regarding tariffs, we have made progress on pass-throughs and other actions to mitigate a portion of our gross tariff exposure, and we believe at this stage, our direct tariff exposure remains manageable and is consistent with our prior expectations. The indirect positive impacts from the tariffs continue to ramp up, including higher demand for U.S. domestically produced aluminum products, a more favorable pricing environment compared to expensive imports, and improved recycling profits in the U.S. Put it all together, we continue to believe that the current tariff and trade policies should be a net positive for us.
All of the known tariff impacts, both direct and indirect, and all of our mitigation efforts to offset the direct impacts are included in our guidance today. Wrapping up on costs. We have demonstrated strong cost performance in the past, and we're confident in our ability to maintain a right-sized cost structure in any environment. Let's turn to slide 10 and discuss our free cash flow. We generated $5 million of free cash flow in the first quarter. The increase in free cash flow versus 2025 was primarily a result of higher segment Adjusted EBITDA, partially offset by an unfavorable change in working capital and higher capital expenditures. Looking at 2026, we now expect to generate free cash flow in excess of $ 275 million for the full year.
We expect CapEx to be approximately $ 330 million, which is up from $ 315 million previously. Unchanged from previous guidance, CapEx still includes approximately $ 100 million of return-seeking CapEx, primarily related to key aerospace and recycling and casting projects we announced previously at Issoire, Muscle Shoals, and Ravenswood. We expect cash interest of approximately $ 125 million, in line with prior guidance, and cash taxes of approximately $80 million, up slightly from prior guidance, mainly due to the expected increase in profitability for the year. We expect working capital and other to be a larger use of cash for the full year than prior guidance, mainly due to higher metal prices. We expect to use the free cash flow generated this year for our share repurchase program and for gross debt reduction.
As Ingrid mentioned previously, we continued our share buyback activities in the quarter. During the quarter, we repurchased 1.2 million shares for $28 million. Since we started the share repurchase program, we have repurchased 14.7 million shares for $221 million. As Ingrid said earlier, in March, we announced that our board approved a new $300 million share repurchase program that expires in December 2028, and that will replace our existing program following our annual shareholders meeting this May. Now let's turn to slide 11 and discuss our balance sheet and liquidity position. At the end of the first quarter, our net debt of $1.8 billion was stable compared to the end of 2025. We reduced our leverage to 2.2x at the end of the quarter, which is within our target range.
We expect the leverage to trend lower in 2026 and to maintain our target leverage range of 1.5x-2.5x over time. As you can see in our debt summary, we have no bond maturities until 2028, and our liquidity increased by $38 million from the end of 2025 and remains very strong at $904 million as of the end of the first quarter. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Ingrid.
Thank you, Jack. Let's turn now to slide number 13 and discuss our current end market outlook. The majority of our portfolio today is serving end markets benefiting from durable and attractive secular growth trends in which aluminum, a light and infinitely recyclable material, plays a critical role. Turning first to the aerospace market. Commercial aircraft backlogs are at record levels today and continue to grow. Major aerospace OEMs remain focused on increasing build rates for both narrow and wide-body aircraft. This is evidenced by higher plane deliveries year-over-year and rising delivery ambitions in the near term. Although supply chain challenges have continued to slow deliveries below what OEMs were expecting for several years in a row now, demand is steady for the most part, and aluminum destocking in the supply chain appears to be easing.
Demand for high-value add products, which is one of our core focus areas, remains strong. We remain confident that the long-term fundamentals driving commercial aerospace demand remain intact, including growing passenger traffic and greater demand for new, more fuel-efficient aircraft. In addition, demand remains stable in the business and regional jet market, whereas demand for space and military aircraft is strengthening. We believe we are a leading provider of proprietary aluminum solutions for those customers in the space and military aviation markets today. As you know, we are investing in additional capacities and capabilities, such as our third Airware cast house in Issoire, which we expect to start up by the end of this year to further strengthen our position in the future.
Looking across our entire commercial and military aviation and space businesses, we believe our product portfolio is unmatched in the industry, and we have industry-leading R&D capabilities for aluminum aerospace solutions. Turning now to packaging. Demand remains healthy in both North America and Europe. The long-term outlook for packaging continues to be favorable as evidenced by the growing consumer preference for the sustainable aluminum beverage can, capacity growth plans from the can makers in both regions, and the greenfield investments ongoing here in the U.S. We continue to see aluminum gain share against other substrates in the beverage market, and the majority of new beverage products are launched in aluminum cans today due to its sustainable attributes. Aluminum cans are highly recyclable, and we are well positioned to capitalize on the benefits from recycling packaging materials at our facilities in Muscle Shoals and Neuf-Brisach.
Packaging markets are relatively stable and recession-resilient, as we have seen many times in the past. Longer term, we continue to expect packaging markets to grow low to mid-single digits in both North America and Europe, providing a strong base load for our operations in both regions. Let's turn now to automotive, which continues to be a bit of a different story in North America versus Europe. In North America, demand is relatively stable, though the tariff environment continues to create some uncertainty. Last year, a U.S.-based facility at one of our competitors was impacted by fire, a very unfortunate event and which has created an interruption in the aluminum raw product supply chain in North America. The entire industry continues to mobilize to ensure we limit the impacts on our customers.
We continue to benefit from this in the first quarter this year in both our P&ARP and A&T businesses, as we were able to help our customers during this outage. On the automotive structure side, we are negatively impacted as some OEMs were forced to reduce production on certain platforms impacted by the disruption on the raw product side. The overall impact in 2026 is a net positive on our results, which we expect to continue throughout the year. Automotive demand in Europe remains weak, particularly in the premium vehicle segment where we have greater exposure. European markets are seeing increased Chinese competition and have lowered their BEV ambitions.
Automotive production in Europe is also feeling the impact of the current Section 232 auto tariffs, given the number of vehicles Europe exports to the U.S. Longer term though, we believe electric and hybrid vehicles will continue to grow, but at a lower rate than previously expected. Secular trends such as light weighting, fuel efficiency, and safety will continue to drive the demand for aluminum products. As a result, we remain positive on this market over the longer term in both regions despite the weakness we are seeing today. As you can see on the page, these three core end markets represent over 80% of our last 12 months revenue. Turning lastly to other specialties, these markets are typically dependent upon the health of the industrial economies in each region, including drivers like the interest rate environment, industrial production levels, and consumer spending patterns.
Industrial market conditions in North America and Europe became more stable in the second half of 2025. We believe the markets, particularly in Europe, have bottomed after three years of market downturn. Nevertheless, we expect the specialties markets in Europe to remain relatively weak in the near term. We do believe TID markets in North America provide us with some opportunities today given the current tariffs make imports less competitive compared to domestic production. We also believe there are some opportunities in land-based defense and semiconductor markets given current market dynamics. As you know, we are focused on niche, high value-added applications in most industrial markets. To conclude on the end markets, we like the fundamentals in each of the markets we serve, and we strongly believe that the diversification of our end markets is an asset for the company in any environment.
Turning lastly now to slide 14, we detail our key messages and financial guidance. Our team delivered strong first quarter results that were ahead of our expectations despite macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties. We achieved record quarterly Adjusted EBITDA, and we returned $28 million to shareholders with the repurchase of 1.2 million shares. I want to thank each of our Constellium team members for their continued focus on strong cost control, free cash flow generation, and commercial and capital discipline. Based on our current outlook for 2026, we are now targeting Adjusted EBITDA, excluding the non-cash impact of metal price lag, in the range of $900 million-$940 million, and free cash flow in excess of $275 million.
Our guidance for 2026 assumes that favorable market conditions will continue into the rest of 2026. These include benefiting from the current supply shortages of automotive raw products in North America, an improved aerospace and TID environment, and favorable scrap and metal dynamics in North America. Our guidance also assumes the recent demand trends in our end markets that I described earlier will continue and the overall macroeconomic environment to remain relatively stable. Looking to the future, we remain laser-focused on executing our roadmap to delivering Adjusted EBITDA, excluding the non-cash impact of metal price lag of EUR 900 million and free cash flow of EUR 300 million by 2028.
The key drivers behind these targets compared to 2026 performance include executing on various return-seeking CapEx projects, strong cost control and productivity improvements, including our Vision 2028 program and continued price discipline. Our 2028 targets also assume additional growth in markets such as aerospace, TID, and packaging. As a reminder, these targets do not include the favorable scrap spread environment we are seeing today or the benefits we expect in 2026 from the current supply shortages of automotive raw products in North America. To conclude, we are extremely well positioned for long-term success and remain focused on executing our strategy and shareholder value creation. With that, operator, we will now open the Q&A session.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Corinne Blanchard with Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning, guys. Congratulations. This is a very strong quarter and an amazing lead for the guidance. That being said, I have a few question around the cadence maybe that we can expect, especially 2Q versus the second half of 2026. The second part of the question would be. Can you help us bridge to 2027 and 2028? I know Ingrid and Jack, you mentioned that there is no tailwind from the current scrap spread environment. How do we think about 2027 and 2028? Do we think of it as, you know, EBITDA slightly flat or going down in 2027 and going up again in 2028? That would be very helpful. Thank you.
Well, first of all, thank you very much, Corinne, and thank you for your questions. I start on the first one on the cadence, then I let Jack complete on it. You know that, traditionally, our first half of the year is much stronger. We have seasonality in our earnings, but driven by volumes in our respective end markets. Particularly the second quarter tends to be quite strong on the packaging side. Then we have higher cost in the second half of the year because of our annual outages in the summer period and around the Christmas period where we do our major maintenance work, which is also driving additional cost. I let Jack complete on the sequence of earnings.
Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, Q2 tends to be seasonally the strongest quarter in the year. That's our expectation for the time being. I think, just looking ahead, you know, we have good momentum in the business. We have good visibility into the second quarter. Now the macro environment, the geopolitical environment, it's very volatile, as all of you know. There's higher degrees of kind of uncertainty which may impact, may or may not impact the broader demand in the second half.
Okay.
Thank you.
As it relates to our targets for 2028, I think you have to see 2027 as a transition year in the execution of our strategic milestones that we presented some time ago. 2027, we see the complete ramp-up of our recycling center in Issoire. We will have our DC casting [Pitney] Muscle Shoals ramping up in 2027, as well as our Airware cast house investment, which will start up at the end of this year. Those investments are going to be complete or will start up, so we will have a kind of transition result. We also still believe that 2027 will see a little bit of strength on the aerospace side as destocking may come to an end.
I think we all know that the supply chain remains challenged also particularly on the engine side. We believe 2027 could be a turning point. Packaging is expected to remain strong, and TID North America is also going to be strong in 2027 from what we can see today. I think on the drawbacks potentially, we don't know the full impact of the Middle East crisis today. We talked about inflationary pressures that we are seeing today. The end market impact from the Middle East crisis that the longer it lasts may have some impact on some of our markets, and that really remains to be seen. We do not expect any improvement on the automotive side.
We expect 2027 to be rather weak on automotive, particularly in Europe and maybe a little bit better in North America. I think these are the puts and takes for the 2027, which is really a transition year to our 2028 guidance.
Thank you. That's very helpful. Maybe if I may just quickly, like on aerospace, I know you commented and we saw some new contract being signed. Can you just talk about expectation or your view on volume versus the high margin that you're getting from TID? Like, how do we think about this for the rest of the year? Thank you.
Yeah. The contract that we just announced is a multi-year contract with Airbus that is covering various extruded products delivered from our French operations, including some proprietary materials like our Airware aluminum-lithium technology. It's really cementing the good relationship and partnership that we have with Airbus for a very long period of time. It's more to be seen as a continuation and strong mix for our extrusion business for the future.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Katja Jancic with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe staying on the 26 guide. Jack, you mentioned that your scrap is secured or locked in for 2Q, but that your team is still looking to lock in some for second half of the year. Can you talk about what does your guide assume for scrap spreads for the rest of the year, or how should we think about it?
Yeah, sure. Good morning, Katja. The second quarter, as we said, is essentially locked in at this stage. You know, it's important to remain focused on productivity and operational excellence. In terms of the economics, if you will, the UBC spread is more favorable in the second quarter compared to our experience, what we experienced in the first quarter. Our assumption is the metal price conditions, which is, you know, pretty much at the all-time high, are expected to remain quite elevated at least over the short term. Now moving to the second half of the year, I would say over 50% of the needs are locked in at this stage, so there's still quite a bit that's open.
You know, the market remains as you know, highly dynamic where you can use volatile as a word, right? There are a number of factors that could drive you to a different set of, you know, scenarios. There's a high degree of variation potentially. For the remaining volume for our guide, we took sort of a middle of the road approach of that's, you know, still above our prior expectations for the second half, but it's not as aggressive as the first half of 2026, but it's not nearly as conservative as what we had experienced in the second half of 2024 and through, you know, most part of 2025.
Okay. Maybe your free cash flow generation is gonna increase in the rest of the year versus the first quarter. You've been buying back shares. Is there an opportunity for you to accelerate the buybacks versus what you did in the first quarter? How are you thinking about it?
Yeah. It's a good question. Number one, I think, when it comes to buyback or just overall capital allocation, our approach has always been kinda maintain a balanced approach. Now more specifically with the share buyback, we're comfortable with the existing pace of, you know, running the buyback program. You know, as a reminder, it's EUR 300 million over three years. Having a steady pace has worked for us in the past, and we still view, you know, buying back shares as attractive. We look to maintain this similar type of pace going forward.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Peterson with JPMorgan.
Hi. Good morning, thanks for taking the questions and congrats on the strong results and raise. I wanted to ask actually a question I don't think you really talked about during your prepared remarks. There have been some changes in the Section 232 derivative tariffs. I'm wondering how you're thinking about the potential impacts and how that may, you know, have on your business, whether it be supporting prices or what are you hearing from your customers on this front?
Thanks for the question, and thank you, Bill , for your comments. I think the last changes on the Section 232 do not really impact us. We have a very, very minor impact in our AS&I business, but overall it's just a confirmation that tariffs are going to stick, and so we think the indirect benefits of Section 232 will continue for us. No changes in our other businesses.
Thanks for that. On automotive, you've mentioned about the U.S. being better than Europe, and I think you've benefited somewhat at the margin, from, you know, the unfortunate incident that you talked about. Should that benefit really be, in your view, concluded in the second quarter? Or how are you thinking about the, you know, the cadence of automotive for the remainder of the year, both in P&ARP and AS&I?
Yeah. I think on the P&ARP side, we are, at this stage, pretty confident that, you know, the benefit we have been seeing from the outage is going to continue. We are supplying basically from Europe. We are maxing out capacity in the U.S., and we are supplying material also from Ravenswood to feed into our rolling system so we can maximize overall capacity. That is allowing us to gain additional qualifications and supporting obviously the relationships with customers beyond what we are experiencing today. AS&I is mostly impacted by slower ramp up of production on a certain platform. We have no clear visibility of how the full year is going to look.
The impact of it financially speaking is rather minor for the company and is actually, if you think about the net impact, it remains largely very, very positive.
Yeah. Thanks again for sharing your insights and congrats on the quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Timna Tanners with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hey, good morning. Thanks for all the great details so far. I just wanted to drill down a little bit more on some of the discussion about the European market, in particular on the auto side. Getting some questions about the BYD getting built in Europe and the implications for Constellium and any thoughts on aluminum versus steel consumption there and in the U.S., given some reports of switching.
Okay. Thank you for the question, Timna . I think on the European automotive market, it's true that BYD has announced building production in Hungary and in Turkey, if you consider the wider Europe. The cars that they're building have much more content of steel in the body of the car, so we don't really expect much impact in this. I mean, our focus in Europe is mostly on premium vehicles with the German OEMs, but also others. We do not see any impact at this point. We're also producing mostly local for local, right? We're not generally shipping automotive material across. In the U.S., with respect to switching, we have not seen any evidence of people switching other than normal course of business.
We really expect that, you know, the need for fuel efficiency is going to continue, and this is what we see on both sides of the Atlantic.
Okay, thanks for that. Regarding the scrap spreads, if they persist at these levels, is there much ability to increase the proportion of your product that's made from scrap? Meaning, can you try to expand that production, especially given the tight markets that could persist in the broader U.S. and I guess Europe?
I start and then I let Jack continue. In fact, all of our businesses are using scrap. We mostly talk about UBC for the packaging market, but we also are using a lot of scrap in the rest of our operations. Certainly with everything that's going on in the markets, we have already been working in improving our metal costs through usage of more scrap and different types of scrap and also more difficult types of scrap. You know that the industry is moving towards upcycling scrap streams that exist in the market through sorting technologies, and we are actively involved in this as well.
We also recycle material for our aerospace business, for TID business, and also on the extrusion side, we have a share of recycled content in all of the alloys that we produce today.
Just more broadly speaking, I mean, recycling and casting is core to what we do. If you look at our, you know, capital expenditure profile, especially when it comes to, you know, return seeking CapEx, it's going towards recycling and casting investments. That's definitely a focus area for us, Timna Tanners.
Can you quantify any of the ability to expand on recycling? Again, given that we may have shortages of billet and the market's gotten quite tight there, with the smelter disruptions, is there any ability to expand the amount of finished aluminum you produce using scrap?
I wouldn't say that the shortage of primary aluminum is the main driver for us. I think it's an ongoing program where we continue to use as much scrap as we can find in the market, in the alloys and the shapes that are available in the market. It's quite volatile as well because not every scrap can go somewhere. It's a focus of us for many, many years already to optimize as much as we can. It's very much dependent on availability of the right type of scrap in the right moment. We have potential to improve, but it would be not additional casting output, if you want. It would be a lower metal cost because we would be replacing prime metal with scrap in our operations.
Got it. Okay, thanks again.
You're welcome.
Thank you. I'm currently showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Ingrid Joerg, a CEO of Constellium for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you everybody for your interest in Constellium. As you can see, we are off to a very strong start to the year. We delivered record performance in the first quarter and increased our outlook for 2026. We are very happy with the steps we're making towards our 2028 targets, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in July. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.