AMAG Austria Metall AG

VSE:AMAG

Earnings Call Transcript 2018-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Yoda, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the AMAG Austria Metall AG Conference Call on the Q1 2018 results. [Operator Instructions]

AMAG compile the forecasts, budgets and forward-looking assessments and statements contained in this presentation on the basis of information available to the group at the time the report was prepared. In the event the assumptions underlying these forecasts prove to be incorrect, targets are missed or risks materialize, actual results may depart from those currently anticipated. We are not obliged to revise this forecast in light of new information or future events. This presentation was prepared and the data contained in it verified with the greatest possible care. Nevertheless, misprints in rounding and transmission errors cannot be entirely ruled out. This presentation is also available in German. In cases of doubt, the German-language version shall be authoritative.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Felix Demmelhuber, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Felix Demmelhuber, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to our conference call for the first quarter of 2018. For today's conference call, I'm joined here by our CEO, Helmut Wieser; and our CFO, Gerald Mayer. As usual, after the presentation, we have a Q&A session. Now, Helmut Wieser, please start your presentation.

[Helmut Wieser, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm glad to welcome you to the earnings call for the first quarter of 2018 for our Austria Metall. Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

I would like to begin with the highlights of first quarter for 2018. We saw a good development and demand for aluminium and its products. The global demand for primary aluminium and aluminium rolled products will reach new record levels in 2018. However the market is affected strongly by political topics and other special effects, which I will show you some slides later. Our results trend is positive taking the positive one-off effects in the previous year and the current start-up costs for the new facilities into [ account ]. And with the start-up of the mill, we are really good on track. Based on increasing customer approvals for the new plant and also to the good order book situation, we expect significant volume growth in the Rolling Division for 2018. With our first quarter 2018 numbers, we want to give you a first EBITDA guidance, but due to the current volatile market environment, characterized by political uncertainties, we can only provide a relative wide range. As you can see, the range is between EUR 150 million and EUR 170 million on the EBITDA basis.

Go to Slide 5, for a little bit more in detail primary aluminium high demand growth. According to the latest forecast of CRU, the global demand for primary aluminium will increase to around 5% to 67 million tonnes in 2018. Compared with the forecast in October 2017, CRU upgraded the 2018 demand slightly again. For the coming years, the demand is said to rise further. Growth in all regions worldwide, the global compound annual growth rate is estimated to be around 4% until 2022.

Also the rolled product report high growth rates. CRU expects also a positive market development and attractive growth for the coming years with a CAGR of around 4% worldwide form today around 28 million tonnes to 32 million tonnes in 2022 and this is across all regions in the world. Main driver for the demand is furthermore the transport industry with the attractive growth rates of around 7% annually. But also in other industries, such as the packaging, fire-stop construction and machinery industry, global demand is said to rise by 3% to 4%.

The next slide shows you the aluminium sheets for the automotive industry. As I've mentioned also in our last earnings calls, the trend for using aluminum sheets for so called hang-on-parts or closure panels such as doors, hoods or fenders and roofs is continuing. Weight reduction by using aluminum is an important factor for the automotive industry to reach the CO2 emission targets in the coming years. And as you well know, the emission targets are across the world; in every country there are new emission targets. In its latest forecast, CRU confirmed its attractive growth forecast for 2018 and the next 10 years. CRU estimates a growth rate of around 18% in the demand for auto body sheet to 1.6 million tonnes and the demand will grow dynamically in the following years. For the year 2027, so a little bit longer term, we have an estimation of a global demand of 3.8 million tonnes and you can see it on the chart above. This corresponds to a compound annual growth rate from '17 to '27 of 11% to double-digit growth. And as you well know, our investments, which we did and concluded last year, is said to cover this growth.

Site expansion project, as you already, know we commissioned our new facilities last year, the so-called 2020 project, in mid of 2017. In the first quarter of '18, the focus was primarily on the qualification of the new facilities and we continued the ramp-up successfully. During the last month, we have received an increasingly number of customer approvals from different industries, which is a really good basis for volume growth in the Rolling Division in '18, despite that we see some delays from premium customers in the ramp-up of new products. So we call it SOP delayed in a couple of -- with a couple of customers. And to supply our new cold rolling mill with additional hot rolled sheets, we started also an additional shift on the hot rolling mill in the last weeks.

The market environment in the last months was affected by several different effects -- I would say special effects, which we have caused high price fluctuations in aluminum, in premiums and in alumina. Beginning of March 2018, the U.S. administration imposed additional tariffs of 10% for various countries and regions. For the EU, Canada and Mexico, the U.S. administration postponed the decision on tariffs on the U.S. imports for 30 days on Monday -- on last Monday again. The final structure of the import tariffs in the region and countries, which are definitely affected, is furthermore uncertain.

At the beginning of March '18, Brazilian authorities imposed a 50% capacity reduction for the largest alumina refinery worldwide. A global shortage and a huge price increase in alumina were the consequence. It is uncertain how long the situation that in Alunorte will last.

The third point I would like to mention are the additional U.S. sanctions against Russia, which also impact 1 of our -- the largest producer of aluminum and alumina worldwide. Under the sanctions, Americans are generally prohibited from doing business with Rusal, and people of other nationalities could face sanctions themselves if they do business with Rusal. Until October 2018, it is allowed to wind down the business with Rusal.

On the next slide, I want to show you the market balance of primary aluminum by region. The U.S. market has a huge deficit in primary aluminum. In the previous years, this deficit was offset by imports from several regions, such as from Canada and also from Russia. In 2017, nearly 1 million tonne was imported from Russia. And also in Europe, there is a significant deficit in the market which was partly offset by deliveries from Russia -- 1.4 million tonnes in '17.

As you can see on the chart, sanction against Russian aluminum producers could cause a huge shortage in primary aluminum and also in rolling slabs in the American and the European market. Due to our strategic position, we are very well prepared for such turbulent times. Because of our own casthouse in Ranshofen, which we expanded in accordance with our site expansion program; we are able to produce the majority of our rolling slabs ourselves by using aluminum scrap as main input material. And in contrast to many competitors in the rolling business, we have the option to supply our rolling and Casting division with our own primary aluminum produced in the Alouette smelter in Sept-iles in Canada. This -- on the one hand we can ship our primary aluminum very cost efficient to the U.S. market, which is characterized by outstanding premiums at the moment, and on the other hand, we can bring primary aluminum to the European market and to our Ranshofen site if it's necessary or more economic.

Now, I would like to hand over to Gerald.

[Gerald Mayer, executive]

Thank you, Helmut. Good morning from my side. So from the financial perspective, we saw a -- I would say, a very interesting first quarter, which was characterized, as Helmet said, I would say, by a solid operating performance. We saw some impact, of course, from the qualification -- qualifying activities and from delayed start-up, let's say, start-up activities on our -- start of production activities of our customers or some of our customers on the one side. On the other side, we saw lower shipments in our Metal and Casting division, which is just a normal thing and the planned thing. We did some modernization activities in our Casting division. We have, let's say, additional pot relinings which we have planned in our Metal division. So many impacts, but all-in-all, I would say from the operating or operational performance, quite positive.

On the other side, we saw, as Helmut said, the impacts from politics, as he just discussed, and I will show you this impact on the next slides. So Slide 12 where you see volatility in prices; really interesting. The left side is the all-in aluminum price in dark blue and the light blue curve is the LME aluminum price, the 3 months aluminum price.

You saw in the -- we saw in the first 3 months a declining LME part of the aluminum price, which was more or less compensated by higher premiums. And all of a sudden, at the end of the quarter, beginning of April, you saw a sharp increase in aluminum price and in premiums and this had to do with the tariffs -- the U.S. tariffs, which were announced and we are still at the very high level.

So the interesting thing here is that we saw, let's say, the lowest prices, worth around USD 1,950 and in April, we had, for some minutes, more than USD 2,700, so really huge, let's say, volatilities in the last weeks and months.

On the right side, you see the alumina price, API. The API increased also sharply. During the first weeks, it was more or less in a, for us, let's say, in a decent solid level in the first 3 months, decreasing from around USD 400 to around USD 370 per tonne and then again this show a sharp increase, why? The alumina price increased so sharply. There are 2 main reasons. The first reason is that the biggest refinery in alumina of the world, it's Alunorte in Brazil, was forced by the authorities to reduce capacity by 50% and this has, of course, an impact on the market as a whole. In addition to that, we had the Russian situation, which we all had in the media and also alumina is affected because Russia and the Rusal, its biggest player, has some sources outside of Russia and also, let's say, in the Atlantic region. And this, let's say, caused some sort of a bottleneck and also a sharp increase. Right now, as we speak, we're at the level of USD 650 roughly a tonne of alumina. So this is of course something which impacted our results and will impact our results further in the next months.

Let's change to -- go to Slide 13. What you see here is, of course, the alumina price -- aluminum price, sorry, in average increased by USD 300 per tonne compared to last year. So for us, positive, of course, as we have our stake in Alouette. Shipments are down and I will talk about this a little bit later, and revenues are up slightly, by 2%.

Let's say, if you look to the shipments, 107,100 tonnes compared to 101,000 tonnes this year. So if you go into a little bit more detail and have a look into the divisions here, we saw a decrease in Casting division by roughly 4,000 tonnes and a decrease in the Metal division by roughly 2,000 tonnes. Both are related to maintenance activities, modernization activities, as I mentioned in my first, let's say, words, which I -- in our discussion today.

In the Rolling Division, we have more or less flat development compared to prior year. What you have to understand talking about the Rolling Division or evaluating and analyzing Rolling Division is that, we are -- let's say, we are right now in some sort of a peak, let's say, working in qualifying our new plant with our customers. So we are producing in this -- in the rolling mill and of course on -- I would say on a very solid level. But, of course, there is still not a lot of material included which we can sell to the customers. Of course, there is something included, on the one side. On the other side, Helmut mentioned before that we have some delays with our customers in starting up their, let's say, new products and this of course had an impact and influence. So all-in-all, I would say, from an operating perspective, as planned, roughly at the same level of last year, and if we are down, we are down because of maintenance activities in Casting and Metal.

Revenue is up. This is, of course, price driven, but this is the case. Let's have a look to the EBITDA and let's compare it -- if I could go back to our, let's say, IPO in 2011, it's still the second highest level. So -- of course we are down compared to the year 2017, but it's the second highest level. This is perhaps an interesting information. And if we would compare apple with apple, and we -- what we do is we just take our EBITDA as it comes out of, let's say -- since then, we do not adjust, and report [ adjusted ] EBITDA. If we would adjust by, let's say, extraordinary impacts, you have to bear in mind that going back 1 year, we reported that the EUR 43.4 million were supported by a one-off effect of EUR 3 million related to R&D, let's say, tax credits. So, if I would reduce the year 2017 by EUR 3 million, we would end up roughly at the level of EUR 40 million. On the other side, I could do the same adjustment in the year 2018; again EUR 3 million, I could eliminate extraordinary start-up costs, which also is special effect this year. And if you add to the EUR 39 million, EUR 3 million of start-up costs, we would compare EUR 42 million in the year 2018 to roughly EUR 40 million in the year 2017. And it would be a positive development. So you have to eliminate -- in order to compare apples to apples, you have to eliminate some extraordinary effects here.

To the bridge on the next slide, Slide 15. You see, of course, a big impact on the aluminum price. I explained to you that we are up compared to the first quarter last year roughly USD 300 per tonne. Of course, this has a positive impact for our Metal division --[ full ] effect of positive aluminum prices [ for first ] -- for our Metal division.

On the other side, we also have negative impact in the Metal division and this has to do with alumina in particular and also in energy cost. So, adding up all these effects in the bridge referring to Metal division, and this is what you will see a little bit later, that the positive impact from pricing means alumina price and premiums is more or less compensated by higher raw material costs means alumina. Currency effects minus EUR 1 million roughly -- the EUR 0.8 million refer in particular to the U.S. dollar euro translation. Volume mix is down EUR 2.2 million, as I mentioned before and explained before; this has to do with our maintenance activities in Casting and Metal division, prices/premiums are up. I think this is what was explained on my first slide. Raw material is down in particular alumina, as I said, and the extraordinary items, like I mentioned before, means additional start-up costs and R&D tax credits. In all-in-all, this adds up to EUR 6 million roughly. And this is the reason why we are at compared to last year.

Going to the next slide, I just want to mention that after we started up our new plant, of course, depreciation is increased -- it increased higher than in the, let's say, first quarter 2017 by roughly EUR 2 million. So this is the reason why the delta between EBITDA and EBIT is not, let's say, at the same level, and the EBIT is down EUR 6 million roughly compared to last year.

Cash flow trends on the next slide. You see that the operating cash flow is up compared to last year. It is still not where it, let's say, that we would like to have it, but there is also a big reason and this has to do with again with our start-up. So we have roughly 10,000 tones more of work in progress than end of last year, and this of course is something which you will find in the working capital needs. And therefore the working capital also includes, let's say, an increase of roughly 10,000 tonnes of work in progress in Q1 2018. Last year, we also had an impact -- a negative impact on working capital, and last year it was in particular pricing, so aluminum price was up last year, and this was the main reason for the number last year. But in all-in-all, positive development. Cash flow from investing activities, I think, as planned and as expected, less CapEx, because we are more or less -- we have done our, let's say, AMAG 2020 project. So EUR 20 million of compared to EUR 45 million roughly of cash flow of cash-outs from investing activities.

To the balance sheet on Slide 18, still of course a quite solid balance sheet. So we have roughly 45% of equity ratio. Net debt is at the level of the end of last year, but of course this is pre-dividend payment, and the gearing is also at the same level. So, still very positive ratios, which I can present to you.

Let say if we look at our 3 divisions; the Metal division, as I mentioned -- so here, of course, we have the big impacts from aluminum price, from alumina price and other raw materials. This is what we see here. And, of course, of our pot relining activities. So we've -- we are on the peak of the cycle in pot relinings in the year 2018 and 2019. So these are 2 years where we reline more or less the bulk of our sales in our smelter. And this, of course, is then translated also in lower shipments. In addition to that, as I mentioned before, aluminum prices and premium levels are supporting our results, and then we are up compared to last year. And alumina prices, and -- please bear in mind that it takes roughly 2 tonnes of alumina to produce 1 tonne of aluminum; they are also significantly up and this more or less compensates the positive impacts from higher price levels this year in the first quarter.

For our Casting division, we are -- the result is at the level of last year and this, despite our modernization activities, we have a -- which have a negative impact on our total shipments, which you see here by 4,000 tonnes roughly. So all-in-all, it was a very positive year for our first quarter for our Casting division. So they managed to deliver, let's say, a stable -- roughly stable EBITDA based on very lower shipments. And what we expect here is beginning from the second half of this year that the volumes will increase again.

For the Rolling Division, I think, all-in-all, as I mentioned before, shipments are affected, of course, that we are now working and qualifying our new plant -- we are producing to the qualification work on the one side. So there are some positive volume effects in it. On the other side, of course, we also are affected by some delayed SOP stage from some of our customers in the first quarter and then the shipments of [ rolling ] are stable at the same level as last year, and last year was at high level. Revenue is slightly up. It has to do in particular, of course, with pricing, and means the aluminum price also, let's say, also is translated into higher revenues for our Rolling Division. EBITDA is down, as I mentioned before. This is the division where we have the, in particular, the one-off effect, which we have to include. Once again to summarize it, plus EUR 3 million positive effect in 2017, so the like-for-like figure would be [ EUR 27 million ] here. And in Q1 2018, we had a minus EUR 3 million; this is the effect of our start-up costs roughly. So it would be above -- minimum at the same level of last year, which was very, very positive for us.

So this was a view into the divisions and into the financials, and Helmut will now conclude with our outlook. Thank you.

[Helmut Wieser, executive]

Thank you very much, Gerald. Coming to the full-year 2018 outlook, in general, as I said, we have a positive market environment with an attractive consumption growth worldwide. For the 2018 year, as I mentioned, CRU upgraded its growth forecast for primary aluminum and rolled products to around 5%. The rise in demand as well as the ramp-up of the new plants form a good basis for our goal 2018 and in the following years. However, the market environment is characterized by several special effects, which I have already explained in the first part of the presentation, and which can also cause high-price fluctuations for aluminum, alumina and the premiums in the coming months. There is still unclear structure of U.S. import tariffs, the U.S. sanctions against Russia and the capacity reduction at the world largest alumina refinery. This is also the reason why we can provide an earnings forecast for 2018 only in the form of relatively wide range. But, in general, we are really positive. With the stake in the Alouette smelter and our growing site in Ranshofen, we are strategically well positioned in the market, and due to the good ramp-up of our new facilities and due to the good order book position, we expect a significant volume growth in the Rolling Division in 2018. Forecast EBITDA range for 2018, EUR 150 million to EUR 170 million.

The next slide, we would like to give you a capital expenditure guidance. And if you can see on the chart, as we mentioned in the earnings call for our full year in 2017, for the current financial year, we expect capital expenditure in the range between EUR 100 million and EUR 120 million.

When we go to the Slide 26, the AMAG share, very good performance since our IPO, with 174% and the total shareholder return of 213%. The shareholder meeting [ reserved ] on April 17. Dividend of EUR 1.20 per share, which was paid out last week. So this is -- no changes in the shareholder structure, so stable shareholder structure. With this, I would like to hand over back to Felix for the Q&A. Thank you very much for listening.

[Felix Demmelhuber, executive]

Thank you very much, Helmut. Thank you very much, Gerald. And now we can start with the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Markus Remis with RCB.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

A few questions to the results. I mean, firstly, if you could provide us with some background on this Alunorte issue. I mean, how much or which percentage of the overall alumina is produced there, and consequently, how much of global production is falling away? And then secondly, regarding this -- just to get a feeling regarding the sequential volume development in rolling, I mean, is this kind of peak qualification level persisting into the second quarter -- when you expect then an uptick there, plastic catch up from this delayed call-offs by the clients? And then thirdly, I would be interested on this additional ramp-up costs. Why you regard them as a sort of or -- as you -- you've liked them as an extraordinary charge. I mean, you've been handling this ramp up for many quarters now, why is it now treated as an extraordinary? And just to get to the figures the right, if I'm not mistaken, you had a positive one-off also in the first quarter of 2017 from the IFRS 9 introduction, is that true or am I notes here incorrect here?

[Helmut Wieser, executive]

Couple of remarks, you had. Yes, the SOP from our customers are impacted us in the first quarter. We see now that [ this cards are ] coming on-stream. There was 1 significant issue because the whole discussion about diesel engines. I think, some customers really could not, over the last couple of months, decide which engine they have put in the cars and this caused some delays and we were impacted. On the qualification side, I think a couple of good news for qualifications from U.S., Asian, European customers, which will now go in production, I mean, we are very positive on -- we already said that this takes a long time to qualify and I think we are going through this qualification as we speak. And as I mentioned in different aspects in my presentation that we see a growing output in the rolling mill over the year. And Gerald will answer the questions on the Alunorte stuff.

[Gerald Mayer, executive]

I think to add, Markus, you asked why do we qualify this start-up as extra. I would say it's not extra, it's one-off, because if you compare the first quarter to the first quarter last year, of course, there was perhaps a minor amount, let's say, in it and there we had some additional personnel expenses, of course, because people we were building up, let's say, our workforce for the new plant, but not more. If you look at the first quarter this year, it definitely peaked because you also see it on a working capital. So we added roughly 10,000 tonnes of, let's say, working capital and in addition to that, we are working with it -- we are producing. So -- and this additional, let's say, material, which we need -- material which we need also, of course, causes cost and this adds up to roughly 3 million and it is really a peak and therefore I would qualify it that way. This is -- I hope this answers then this question. And in addition -- and on the other side, you asked last year, we had, according to our, let's say, implementation of IFRS 9 in -- as of 30th of June last year, of course, we had to correct, let's say, retroactively the number we reported in the first quarter last year. So the original number was 41 point something -- EUR 41.4 million, I think, of EBITDA this year, then with this correction, because of this implementation of IFRS 9, we are now at EUR 43 million something. Is it an extraordinary effect? I would say, no, because in the first quarter last year, we had some negative impact, which are now corrected to the positive way out of IFRS 9, so apples to apples, it's not the one-off. So we compare the same, let's say, methodology this year as we presented today for the Q1 2017.

Regarding Alunorte, Alunorte, as I said, is the biggest, let say, refinery in the world. It is definitely significant in the short run, in particular for the Atlantic region and for the industry as a whole, as this, let's say, reduced capacity immediately translated into higher prices for the whole world. So this is [ just fact ]. For the mid-term or long run, I would say, I don't see this big, I would say, impact on the -- or it has an impact, but -- we will see, but what we see as of, let's say, ongoing additional capacities in the Middle East, additional capacities out of China and so on, so that it is possible for us to get the alumina. So this is what we saw in this, let's say, first month and I'm convinced that it is possible also in future, so that this bottleneck, which affects the market price, in particular, in the short run, and it was even very strong and it peaked after Rusal -- Russian, let's say, sanctions announced. There is also -- Rusal had some or has some alumina sources, but I think that it should normalize in the next month, at least, it's still high -- very high with the pricing, but we'll see, and I actually, I don't have the most recent figures here in -- as a percentage up, because I don't know what this, but just to give you a flavor we are talking at the reduced capacity itself is 3 million tonnes of alumina. And we -- for Alouette as a whole, I mean, for 100% stake, we need 1.2 million tonnes of alumina and so it is definitely significant for the industry as a whole, in particular in the short run, as you have to bear in mind that normally you don't have, let's say, big stocks of alumina at the smelters. So, for us, it is roughly 20 days normally the minimum stock requirement and thanks God we had 20 days.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Have you've been buying directly from Alunorte?

[Gerald Mayer, executive]

Yes. Directly via traders or [indiscernible].

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Maybe one question regarding the upstream business and the phasing, at least compared to my expectations, the result was a bit better. So presumably I have kind of overestimated already the cost inflation from the raw materials side. I mean, [indiscernible], would you assume that kind of Q2 will be on a sequential basis, be more affected than the first quarter?

[Helmut Wieser, executive]

I would say, Markus, as long as the aluminium price stays where it is now, it will be more affected because as we saw in the chart or as you see in the chart on my first slide, it was 12 or so, Slide 12, you see that it's peaked -- started to peak after end of first quarter. So we definitely will have this impact a little bit delayed, but on the other side, we also saw, of course, an increase in aluminum prices after end of first quarter by roughly USD 300, USD 400 per tonne. So both peaked afterwards. So we will see an impact. Let's -- I'm also curious how things further develop and what the impact we will see at the end of this quarter.

[Operator]

Next question comes from the line of Vera Sutedja with Erste Bank.

[Vera Sutedja, analyst]

It's Vera Sutedja from Erste Bank. I have questions regarding the CapEx guidance, please. The range of EUR 20 million -- so between EUR 100 million and EUR 120 million, what drives this big range in the CapEx guidance? The second question is related to your EBITDA outlook, EUR 150 million and EUR 170 million. Would you mind to elaborate a bit what is the underlying assumption you put in the EUR 150 million? What would be the alumina price for example or alumina price range for this lower end, as well as the aluminum price or the shipment targets, as well as for the high end, so we could understand better what drives this big range?

[Gerald Mayer, executive]

Yes, I can elaborate -- just put this big range. We calculated many scenarios with many different alumina assumptions, FX assumptions and of course, aluminum price assumptions and this makes this big span. I'm sorry that I cannot provide you a smaller one, but we actually thought how much sense it makes to even give you now this type of guidance, but it shows you at least the big uncertainty out of, let's say, political decisions. It's not in our hands. So I really ask you that we keep it as it is. So we only can calculate many different scenarios and this is what we did, and this is the result out of it. On the -- for the CapEx outlook, this is simply a cut-off. So, yes, you saw last year, we gave you an outlook and we were below this outlook. It has to do with milestones with guarantee levels, plant [ builders ] have to, let's say, deliver and these dates of deliver on 31st of December, but perhaps on the first week of January, then it is a lower level. In case they are earlier and they are ahead of time, then it is the higher -- then we are at the higher end, it has to do with milestones and nothing else, so it's cut-off issue. At the end of the day, [ we treat as special ].

[Vera Sutedja, analyst]

Just a follow-up question on the alumina. Generally, is this kind of high prices is some -- can I say that the market does not expect this high prices to be sustainable at this current level, right?

[Gerald Mayer, executive]

We simply do not know it. What we think is that we will get and this is what we see in the market. If you look to weekly or a daily, let's say, reports which we get, we see that the top of the market was at roughly USD 750 or USD 735, the API per tonne and that this API is now at roughly USD 650 per tonne. This is what we see, so it went down a little bit, decreased now a little bit, but it's still very high. No one knows how things will, let's say, continue with Russia then in September, October. So it is delayed for some months. No one knows what the whole input duty thing will pose. So there are so many, let's say, uncertainties which are caused by, let's say, U.S. politics right now that we just have -- for us, it's like, let's say, sailing in the fog somewhere with regard to these assumptions, and therefore, we calculate many scenarios which are widespread and a wide range of assumptions and what we can tell you is that we're now at EUR 150 million to EUR 170 million EBITDA and that we included many, many scenarios including high level of alumina, higher level of aluminum and also the other way round. So this is [indiscernible]

[Helmut Wieser, executive]

Vera, probably to your question, just to add and I said it before, with our stake in Alouette in Canada and our growing site expansion in Ranshofen, we are strategically well positioned in the market and I think very few other companies have this situation where they generate the material on our site and [ it's opened ] by ourselves through the recycling and have the option of prime metal from Alouette. So strategically, I think we are very, very well positioned.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Felix Demmelhuber for closing comments.

[Felix Demmelhuber, executive]

Thank you very much for joining on this call and we wish you all a nice day.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.