Loma Negra Compania Industrial Argentina Sociedad Anonima (NYSE:LOMA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 9, 2023 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Diego Jalon - Head of IR

Sergio Faifman - CEO and VP of Board of Directors

Marcos Gradin - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Alejandra Obregon - Alejandra Obregon

Rodrigo Nistor - Latin Securities

Daniel Rojas - Bank of America

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Loma Negra Third Quarter 2023 Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Also, Mr. Sergio Faifman will be responding in Spanish immediately followed by an English translation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I would like now to turn the conference over to Mr. Diego Jalon, Head of Investor Relations. Please, Diego, go ahead.

Diego Jalon

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Loma Negra's earnings conference call. By now, everyone should have access to our earnings press release and the presentation for today's call, both of which were distributed yesterday after market close. Joining me on the call this morning will be Sergio Faifman, our CEO and Vice President of the Board of Directors; and our CFO, Marcos Gradin. Both of them will be available for the Q&A session.

Before we proceed, I would like to make the following safe harbor statements. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and recent filings with the SEC. We resumed no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed events or circumstances.

This conference call will also include discussion on non-GAAP financial measures. The full reconciliation of the corresponding financial measures is included in the earnings press release.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Sergio.

Sergio Faifman

Thank you, Diego. Hello, everyone, and thank you for showing up this morning. I would like to begin my presentation with a discussion of the highlights of the quarter and then Marcos will take you through our market review and financial results. After that, I will provide some final remarks and then we will open the call to your questions.

Starting with Slide 2, I'm pleased to share the result of the third quarter with you today. The tendency for the volume of the industry persists amidst the election period and the secondary uncertainty. As we mentioned in the previous conference call, cement volume was lower compared to the last year, still shows strong shipment fuel. The high records from the last year set a challenging benchmark for the comparison. The volume reached in this period is the second best quarter of the history for the industry and the recent figures of October compare almost flat with the same period of 2022. As we navigate this election period amidst economic challenges, both the cement industry and Loma have demonstrated resilience. When we delve into the numbers, we see another robust quarter for Loma where our top-line reached ARS74 billion, decreasing 8.3%, primarily due to the volume contraction of our core cement.