ArcelorMittal S.A. (NYSE:MT) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 2, 2024 9:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Daniel Fairclough - Vice President, Investor Relations
Genuino Christino - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Patrick Mann - Bank of America
Andrew Jones - UBS
Tom Zhang - Barclays
Bastian Synagowitz - Deutsche Bank
Tristan Gresser - BNP
Max Kogge - ODDO
Timna Tanners - Wolfe Research
Cole Hathorn - Jefferies
Moses Ola - JPMorgan
Myles Allsop - UBS
Operator
Welcome to the ArcelorMittal First Quarter 2024 Conference Call. I'm Moritz, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that 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. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.
At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Daniel Fairclough, Vice President, IR. Please go ahead, sir.
Daniel Fairclough
Great. Thank you, Moritz. Good afternoon, everyone. This is Daniel Fairclough from the ArcelorMittal Investor Relations team. Thank you very much for joining this call to discuss our performance for the first quarter 2024. Leading today's call will be our Group CFO, Mr. Genuino Christino.
Before we begin today's call, I would like to mention a few housekeeping items. As usual, we will not be going through the results presentation, which we published this morning on our website. However, I do want to draw your attention to the disclaimers on Slide #2 of that presentation. As normal, Genuino will make opening remarks before moving directly to the Q&A session. So, if you would like to ask a question, then please press star one on your keypad to join that queue.
Over to you, Genuino.
Genuino Christino
I'll keep my remarks brief and focus on three topics: safety, our strong financial performance, and the positive outlook for our business.
Beginning with safety, across ArcelorMittal, our people are galvanized to improve safety and achieve our goals of being a fatality-free organization as quickly as we can. The third-party safety audit, which started at the end of December, is now well underway and on target to be completed in September. We believe and expect this to make valuable recommendations that, combined with the considerable efforts already underway, will enable us to deliver the safety results we are striving for.
Moving to our financial performance, as expected, our results in the first quarter improved following the end of the destocking that had impacted on recent quarters. The first quarter saw a 5% improvement in our shipments and a positive price-cost effect, particularly in North America. I believe our EBITDA of $2 billion for this quarter is the highest in our industry. If I look at the last four quarters, we have generated EBITDA of $8.5 billion and adjusted net income of $4.7 billion. Our performance reflects the positive actions we have taken to optimize our business and high-grade our asset portfolio. Over the past four quarters, we have invested $1.6 billion in our strategic growth CapEx. We have led the market in offering the widest portfolio of green steel products, and we have returned equivalent of 8% of our current market cap to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.