Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE:CLF) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call January 30, 2024 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
Lucas Pipes - B. Riley Securities
Timna Tanners - Wolfe Research
Tristan Gresser - BNP Paribas Exane
Bill Peterson - J.P. Morgan
Alex Hacking - Citi
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mellisa, and I am your conference facilitator today. I would like to welcome everyone to Cleveland-Cliffs’ Full-Year and Fourth 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 yesterday.
At this time, I would like to introduce Celso Goncalves, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Celso Goncalves
Good morning, everyone. Before discussing our 2023 results, I'm going to start this call by briefly addressing our recent involvement in the U.S. Steel sale process. And then I'll clarify our M&A strategy and capital allocation priorities going forward.
Just so everyone's on the same page, Cleveland-Cliffs is referenced as company D as in Delta in the proxy statement filed by U.S. Steel last week on December 18 2023 U.S. Steel announced its intention to sell the entire company to Nippon Steel of Japan and indicated their expectation to close the transaction by Q2 or Q3 of 2024 following a brief customary regulatory review process that was characterized by the U.S. Steel CEO as having “a low level of risk”. As we all know by now these were just a few of many severe misjudgments made by the U.S. Steel Board, their management team, their lawyers at Milbank and Wachtel and their financial advisors at Barclays and Goldman Sachs. A deal is only a done deal when it closes and recent reports make it clear that their announced transaction with Nippon faces a very uncertain path to close. So their saga is not over.