Call Start: 8:30 January 1, 0000 9:36 AM ET
Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc. (NYSE:CLF)
Q2 2023 Earnings Call
July 25, 2023 8:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Celso Goncalves - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Lourenco Goncalves - Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Bill Peterson - J.P. Morgan
Lawson Winder - Bank of America
Timna Tanners - Wolfe Research
Curt Woodworth - Credit Suisse
Lucas Pipes - B. Riley Securities
Carlos De Alba - Morgan Stanley
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Daryl, and I am your conference facilitator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Cleveland-Cliffs’ Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. The Company reminds you that certain comments made on today's call will include predictive statements that are intended to be made as forward-looking within the Safe Harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Although the Company believes that its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Important factors that could cause results to differ materially are set forth in reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q and news releases filed with the SEC, which are available on the Company's website.
Today's conference call is also available and being broadcast at clevelandcliffs.com. At the conclusion of the call, it will be archived on the website and available for replay. The Company will also discuss results excluding certain special items. Reconciliation for Regulation G purposes can be found in the earnings release, which was published this morning.
At this time, I would like to introduce Celso Goncalves, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Celso Goncalves
Thank you, Daryl, and good morning, everyone. Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $775 million was more than three times higher than Q1. We had our best free cash flow quarter since 2021, at $756 million. We used most of that cash to pay down over $550 million of debt, bringing our net debt down to $3.9 billion, our lowest debt level since we were just a mining company in 2019.
Q2 of 2023 was our largest quarterly debt reduction in Company history. We also returned nearly $100 million to shareholders by buying back 6.5 million shares at an average price of just over $14 per share. Since the acquisition of FPT in November of 2021, we have dedicated the vast majority of our free cash flow to debt repayment and share repurchases.